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

6 months to
26 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 8 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,447 4,763 4,815
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.39% 16.39% 10.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.44% 18.10% 12.57%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,336 3,015 2,979
10th Percentile £300 £263 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £481 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.78% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £712 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 323 211 406
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.84 £11.04
25th Percentile £15.29 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.71 £25.00 £17.72
Median % change year-on-year -17.16% +41.12% -55.71%
75th Percentile £44.94 £42.25 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £70.00 £68.94
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.33 £22.14 £15.90
% change year-on-year -21.75% +39.29% -46.12%

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 37,733 26,318 38,291
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.81% 90.56% 86.48%
Number of daily rates quoted 23,910 17,091 24,889
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 £638 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £746
UK excluding London median daily rate £483 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.89% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,221 949 2,344
10th Percentile £14.96 £15.19 £12.85
25th Percentile £18.50 £20.45 £16.00
Median hourly rate £34.50 £32.00 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +7.81% -1.54% -9.72%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £58.69
90th Percentile £76.00 £76.25 £71.89
UK excluding London median hourly rate £30.00 £31.52 £31.80
% change year-on-year -4.82% -0.88% -12.28%

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 26 March 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 26 March 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 26 March 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 £490 -2.00% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,826 £475 - 2,670
London -7 2,041 £510 -2.86% 986
Work from Home -1 1,553 £476 -4.85% 1,286
North of England -5 770 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 672 £495 -1.00% 802
Midlands -3 515 £450 +0.56% 478
North West -4 385 £425 -10.53% 365
West Midlands -2 372 £475 +3.26% 278
Yorkshire -4 338 £474 -5.20% 222
South West -2 315 £525 - 308
Scotland +1 258 £447 -1.81% 127
East of England -3 227 £450 - 288
East Midlands -1 144 £413 +7.49% 199
Wales -3 68 £400 +3.23% 81
North East -3 56 £450 - 92
Northern Ireland -3 30 £449 +31.91% 19
Channel Islands -1 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
1 226 (4.15%) Confluence
2 161 (2.96%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.62%) Apache Spark
5 64 (1.17%) Apache
6 61 (1.12%) SAS
7 46 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.62%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 15 (0.28%) nginx
11 12 (0.22%) Oracle Workflow
12 11 (0.20%) Skype for Business
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.17%) Camunda
15 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
16 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.11%) CICS
17 6 (0.11%) JBoss
17 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
18 5 (0.092%) Tomcat
Applications
1 317 (5.82%) Microsoft Excel
2 222 (4.08%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 85 (1.56%) Microsoft Project
5 80 (1.47%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.50%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
12 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
13 4 (0.073%) CATIA
13 4 (0.073%) InDesign
13 4 (0.073%) InVision
13 4 (0.073%) Maya
13 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.055%) Adobe Captivate
14 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 98 (1.80%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.35%) Oracle EBS
6 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
7 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
8 15 (0.28%) SAP ERP
9 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
9 14 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
11 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
11 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
12 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 11 (0.20%) Oracle Receivables
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
13 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
13 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
14 8 (0.15%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 1,162 (21.33%) Azure
2 856 (15.72%) AWS
3 383 (7.03%) Power Platform
4 378 (6.94%) GCP
5 333 (6.11%) Microsoft 365
6 259 (4.75%) Azure DevOps
7 256 (4.70%) GitHub
8 192 (3.52%) Serverless
9 161 (2.96%) Entra ID
10 138 (2.53%) GitHub Actions
11 132 (2.42%) SaaS
12 109 (2.00%) Amazon S3
13 107 (1.96%) AWS Lambda
14 90 (1.65%) OpenShift
15 85 (1.56%) Snowflake
16 78 (1.43%) Azure Data Factory
17 73 (1.34%) Dynamics 365
18 72 (1.32%) Power Automate
19 63 (1.16%) Amazon EC2
20 62 (1.14%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 207 (3.80%) Firewall
2 199 (3.65%) DNS
3 127 (2.33%) TCP/IP
4 120 (2.20%) Network Security
5 112 (2.06%) WAN
6 109 (2.00%) VPN
7 107 (1.96%) DHCP
8 89 (1.63%) LAN
9 66 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
10 54 (0.99%) BGP
11 53 (0.97%) SAN
12 49 (0.90%) VLAN
13 40 (0.73%) OSPF
14 35 (0.64%) VoIP
15 34 (0.62%) SD-WAN
16 29 (0.53%) Wireless
17 27 (0.50%) MPLS
18 25 (0.46%) Internet
19 21 (0.39%) Junos
20 20 (0.37%) SSH
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (5.67%) Power BI
2 190 (3.49%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.07%) Data Warehouse
4 153 (2.81%) PostgreSQL
4 153 (2.81%) Relational Database
5 103 (1.89%) Metadata
6 98 (1.80%) MongoDB
6 98 (1.80%) NoSQL
7 89 (1.63%) Tableau
8 87 (1.60%) Big Data
9 81 (1.49%) Data Lake
10 76 (1.40%) MySQL
11 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
12 57 (1.05%) Oracle Reports
13 50 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 49 (0.90%) Hadoop
15 43 (0.79%) Amazon RDS
16 38 (0.70%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.57%) Azure SQL Database
17 31 (0.57%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 518 (9.51%) JIRA
2 361 (6.63%) Git
3 271 (4.98%) Jenkins
4 176 (3.23%) GitLab
5 85 (1.56%) Selenium
6 55 (1.01%) JUnit
7 42 (0.77%) Postman
8 39 (0.72%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.48%) Cypress.io
12 24 (0.44%) Sonatype Nexus
13 23 (0.42%) Maven
14 21 (0.39%) JMeter
15 20 (0.37%) Mockito
16 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
17 15 (0.28%) CircleCI
17 15 (0.28%) Rational DOORS
17 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
General
1 2,936 (53.90%) Social Skills
2 2,035 (37.36%) Analytical Skills
3 1,236 (22.69%) Finance
4 560 (10.28%) Public Sector
5 439 (8.06%) Banking
6 217 (3.98%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
8 181 (3.32%) Legal
9 161 (2.96%) Retail
10 133 (2.44%) Influencing Skills
11 132 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
12 129 (2.37%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 101 (1.85%) Front Office
14 96 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 90 (1.65%) Marketing
16 85 (1.56%) Investment Banking
17 80 (1.47%) Manufacturing
18 60 (1.10%) Military
19 53 (0.97%) Financial Institution
20 48 (0.88%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 740 (13.59%) Analyst
2 726 (13.33%) Developer
3 480 (8.81%) Senior
4 392 (7.20%) Architect
5 353 (6.48%) Lead
6 311 (5.71%) Business Analyst
7 300 (5.51%) Consultant
8 221 (4.06%) Project Manager
9 215 (3.95%) Data Engineer
10 138 (2.53%) Support Engineer
11 128 (2.35%) Java Developer
12 118 (2.17%) IT Support
13 107 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
14 104 (1.91%) Data Analyst
15 101 (1.85%) Senior Developer
16 99 (1.82%) Software Engineer
17 97 (1.78%) Administrator
18 86 (1.58%) Network Engineer
19 82 (1.51%) Python Developer
20 78 (1.43%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 357 (6.55%) REST
2 177 (3.25%) Kafka
3 171 (3.14%) RESTful
4 164 (3.01%) .NET
5 163 (2.99%) SOAP
6 150 (2.75%) Spring
7 141 (2.59%) Node.js
8 139 (2.55%) React
9 115 (2.11%) AngularJS
10 111 (2.04%) JSON
10 111 (2.04%) Spring Boot
11 110 (2.02%) CSS
12 109 (2.00%) HTML
13 98 (1.80%) XML
14 95 (1.74%) LDAP
15 94 (1.73%) Middleware
16 79 (1.45%) OAuth
17 72 (1.32%) PySpark
18 65 (1.19%) Oracle Fusion
19 64 (1.17%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.10%) Product Ownership
2 235 (4.31%) Cloud Native
3 206 (3.78%) Onboarding
4 170 (3.12%) Management Information System
5 159 (2.92%) Data Centre
6 141 (2.59%) Analytical Mindset
7 136 (2.50%) Self-Motivation
8 116 (2.13%) Data Structures
9 113 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 104 (1.91%) Distributed Systems
11 103 (1.89%) Enterprise Software
12 101 (1.85%) Legacy Systems
12 101 (1.85%) Virtual Team
13 86 (1.58%) Algorithms
14 70 (1.29%) Hybrid Cloud
14 70 (1.29%) Security Posture
15 65 (1.19%) Driving Licence
16 62 (1.14%) CMDB
16 62 (1.14%) Mobile App
17 54 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 573 (10.52%) Windows
2 342 (6.28%) Linux
3 108 (1.98%) Windows Server
4 102 (1.87%) Unix
4 102 (1.87%) Windows 10
5 72 (1.32%) Android
6 66 (1.21%) Apple iOS
7 62 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 56 (1.03%) Mac OS
9 19 (0.35%) VMS
10 16 (0.29%) Ubuntu
11 11 (0.20%) CentOS
12 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
14 7 (0.13%) zOS
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.092%) Debian
16 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,584 (29.08%) Agile
2 998 (18.32%) CI/CD
3 883 (16.21%) DevOps
4 833 (15.29%) Stakeholder Management
5 824 (15.13%) Continuous Improvement
6 634 (11.64%) Analytics
7 567 (10.41%) Migration
8 559 (10.26%) Decision-Making
9 535 (9.82%) AI
10 500 (9.18%) Project Management
11 483 (8.87%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 459 (8.43%) Data Modelling
13 436 (8.00%) Test Automation
14 419 (7.69%) Business Intelligence
15 417 (7.66%) Validation
16 414 (7.60%) Scrum
17 398 (7.31%) Change Management
18 390 (7.16%) ITIL
19 388 (7.12%) Customer Service
20 362 (6.65%) Containerisation
Programming Languages
1 1,038 (19.06%) Python
2 931 (17.09%) SQL
3 481 (8.83%) Java
4 371 (6.81%) PowerShell
5 297 (5.45%) JavaScript
6 225 (4.13%) C#
7 196 (3.60%) TypeScript
8 157 (2.88%) Bash
9 82 (1.51%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.34%) Shell Script
11 65 (1.19%) C++
12 57 (1.05%) Go
13 44 (0.81%) Perl
14 42 (0.77%) Bicep
14 42 (0.77%) T-SQL
15 40 (0.73%) Scala
16 36 (0.66%) C
17 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
17 35 (0.64%) R
18 32 (0.59%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,198 (21.99%) Security Cleared
2 836 (15.35%) SC Cleared
3 692 (12.70%) Degree
4 233 (4.28%) Computer Science Degree
5 212 (3.89%) DV Cleared
6 168 (3.08%) BPSS Clearance
7 122 (2.24%) Cisco Certification
8 110 (2.02%) PMP
9 109 (2.00%) PMI Certification
10 107 (1.96%) Master's Degree
11 102 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
12 101 (1.85%) CISSP
13 73 (1.34%) Azure Certification
14 66 (1.21%) CISM
15 57 (1.05%) CCNP
16 54 (0.99%) CCNA
17 45 (0.83%) AWS Certification
18 43 (0.79%) ITIL Certification
19 42 (0.77%) A+ Certification
20 38 (0.70%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (6.63%) QA
2 335 (6.15%) Data Quality
3 165 (3.03%) GDPR
4 119 (2.18%) Accessibility
5 99 (1.82%) PMO
6 89 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 89 (1.63%) NIST
7 68 (1.25%) SLA
8 43 (0.79%) GRC
9 35 (0.64%) PCI DSS
9 35 (0.64%) WCAG
10 29 (0.53%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.46%) PSD2
11 25 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.31%) HIPAA
13 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
14 14 (0.26%) HL7
15 13 (0.24%) IFRS
15 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 447 (8.21%) Docker
2 380 (6.98%) Active Directory
3 114 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.90%) vSphere
5 40 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.59%) Hyper-V
7 24 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 20 (0.37%) Firmware
9 15 (0.28%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) vCloud
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
14 4 (0.073%) IAG
14 4 (0.073%) Snort
15 3 (0.055%) BitLocker
15 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 507 (9.31%) Kubernetes
2 328 (6.02%) Terraform
3 202 (3.71%) Ansible
4 132 (2.42%) Grafana
5 125 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
6 104 (1.91%) Prometheus
7 87 (1.60%) SCCM
8 46 (0.84%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
10 35 (0.64%) vCenter Server
11 31 (0.57%) Kibana
11 31 (0.57%) Puppet
12 27 (0.50%) Argo
13 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 21 (0.39%) Nessus
15 19 (0.35%) Control-M
16 15 (0.28%) IBM Guardium
16 15 (0.28%) vRealize
17 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
18 11 (0.20%) VxRail
Vendors
1 974 (17.88%) Microsoft
2 357 (6.55%) Oracle
3 266 (4.88%) SAP
4 235 (4.31%) ServiceNow
5 204 (3.75%) VMware
6 174 (3.19%) Google
7 167 (3.07%) Databricks
8 140 (2.57%) Splunk
9 131 (2.40%) Cisco
10 114 (2.09%) Salesforce
11 80 (1.47%) Red Hat
12 72 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 66 (1.21%) BeyondTrust
14 63 (1.16%) Dell
15 61 (1.12%) Citrix
16 58 (1.06%) IBM
17 55 (1.01%) Workday
18 54 (0.99%) Informatica
18 54 (0.99%) Palo Alto
19 53 (0.97%) Talend