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

6 months to
13 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -5 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,174 4,957 4,655
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.96% 17.10% 10.89%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.00% 18.80% 12.62%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,089 3,097 2,836
10th Percentile £263 £250 £236
25th Percentile £385 £391 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £484 £500 £502
Median % change year-on-year -3.30% -0.40% -4.38%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £726
UK excluding London median daily rate £466 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -1.86% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 342 242 409
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.06
25th Percentile £14.70 £15.62 £13.82
Median hourly rate £21.13 £22.14 £16.50
Median % change year-on-year -4.58% +34.18% -65.91%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.00 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £21.24 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.08% +41.60% -63.05%

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 39,805 26,361 36,876
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.33% 90.96% 86.25%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,996 16,941 23,723
10th Percentile £325 £305 £300
25th Percentile £413 £410 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £505 £516 £525
Median % change year-on-year -2.13% -1.71% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £626 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £492 £479 £500
% change year-on-year +2.71% -4.20% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,368 1,073 2,431
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.41 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.90 £18.38 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.50 £28.60 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +48.60% -21.64% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.31 £60.00 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.78 £38.00
% change year-on-year +74.59% -32.17% +8.57%

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 13 May 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 13 May 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 13 May 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 -5 4,426 £495 -1.00% 3,218
UK excluding London -5 2,757 £466 -1.86% 2,582
London -12 1,881 £520 -0.95% 983
Work from Home -2 1,474 £475 -5.00% 1,268
North of England -8 734 £450 -7.98% 679
South East -7 641 £492 -1.60% 760
Midlands -6 499 £469 +4.69% 429
North West -6 355 £417 -14.83% 371
West Midlands -9 343 £475 +2.70% 257
Yorkshire -6 337 £463 -3.65% 228
South West -1 324 £500 -2.44% 309
Scotland -2 263 £438 -5.41% 112
East of England -3 219 £450 -1.80% 262
East Midlands -1 155 £434 +16.44% 173
Wales -3 71 £400 +20.78% 73
North East -10 49 £425 -11.23% 87
Northern Ireland -3 26 £447 +9.69% 28
Channel Islands -4 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
1 211 (4.08%) Confluence
2 146 (2.82%) SharePoint
3 86 (1.66%) Microsoft Exchange
4 82 (1.58%) Apache Spark
5 56 (1.08%) Apache
6 50 (0.97%) SAS
7 47 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.58%) CMS
9 20 (0.39%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.14%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.12%) Camunda
14 6 (0.12%) CICS
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.077%) Anypoint
Applications
1 295 (5.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.35%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.18%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 77 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
5 71 (1.37%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 12 (0.23%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.14%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.14%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.14%) Trello
12 6 (0.12%) Adobe XD
12 6 (0.12%) Revit
13 5 (0.097%) Maya
14 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.077%) InDesign
15 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 121 (2.34%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.39%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.35%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.27%) NEC Housing
7 14 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.21%) SAP GRC
10 11 (0.21%) Workday HCM
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.17%) iTrent
12 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
12 9 (0.17%) SAP SD
12 9 (0.17%) Shopify
13 8 (0.15%) Loan IQ
13 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
13 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,032 (19.95%) Azure
2 793 (15.33%) AWS
3 389 (7.52%) Power Platform
4 343 (6.63%) Microsoft 365
5 328 (6.34%) GCP
6 232 (4.48%) Azure DevOps
7 208 (4.02%) GitHub
8 157 (3.03%) Entra ID
9 147 (2.84%) Serverless
10 124 (2.40%) SaaS
11 108 (2.09%) GitHub Actions
12 94 (1.82%) Amazon S3
13 85 (1.64%) AWS Lambda
14 78 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
15 72 (1.39%) Snowflake
16 71 (1.37%) Power Automate
17 69 (1.33%) OpenShift
18 68 (1.31%) Azure Data Factory
19 56 (1.08%) PowerApps
20 51 (0.99%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 186 (3.59%) DNS
2 174 (3.36%) Firewall
3 118 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 109 (2.11%) VPN
5 105 (2.03%) WAN
6 102 (1.97%) DHCP
7 87 (1.68%) Network Security
8 83 (1.60%) SAN
9 77 (1.49%) LAN
10 67 (1.29%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (0.95%) BGP
11 49 (0.95%) VLAN
12 43 (0.83%) OSPF
13 40 (0.77%) SD-WAN
14 31 (0.60%) VoIP
15 29 (0.56%) Wireless
16 26 (0.50%) VXLAN
17 25 (0.48%) Internet
18 23 (0.44%) MPLS
19 21 (0.41%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 305 (5.89%) Power BI
2 194 (3.75%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.51%) PostgreSQL
4 130 (2.51%) Relational Database
5 111 (2.15%) Metadata
6 83 (1.60%) MongoDB
6 83 (1.60%) Tableau
7 82 (1.58%) NoSQL
8 80 (1.55%) Big Data
9 75 (1.45%) Data Lake
10 60 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
11 57 (1.10%) MySQL
12 50 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 49 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 41 (0.79%) Hadoop
15 33 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
16 30 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
16 30 (0.58%) Power Query
17 29 (0.56%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 494 (9.55%) JIRA
2 297 (5.74%) Git
3 192 (3.71%) Jenkins
4 138 (2.67%) GitLab
5 66 (1.28%) Selenium
6 39 (0.75%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.50%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.48%) REST Assured
10 23 (0.44%) Cypress.io
10 23 (0.44%) JUnit
11 21 (0.41%) JMeter
12 17 (0.33%) SonarQube
12 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.31%) Maven
13 16 (0.31%) Mockito
13 16 (0.31%) Sonatype Nexus
14 15 (0.29%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.27%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.21%) Appium
General
1 2,671 (51.62%) Social Skills
2 1,982 (38.31%) Analytical Skills
3 1,196 (23.12%) Finance
4 497 (9.61%) Public Sector
5 395 (7.63%) Banking
6 222 (4.29%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.54%) Retail
8 174 (3.36%) Documentation Skills
9 153 (2.96%) Legal
10 122 (2.36%) Presentation Skills
11 115 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 111 (2.15%) Influencing Skills
13 95 (1.84%) Front Office
14 91 (1.76%) Manufacturing
14 91 (1.76%) Telecoms
15 86 (1.66%) Marketing
16 77 (1.49%) Investment Banking
17 62 (1.20%) Back Office
18 58 (1.12%) Law
19 52 (1.01%) Military
Job Titles
1 725 (14.01%) Analyst
2 626 (12.10%) Developer
3 453 (8.76%) Senior
4 357 (6.90%) Architect
5 319 (6.17%) Lead
6 288 (5.57%) Business Analyst
7 257 (4.97%) Consultant
8 235 (4.54%) Data Engineer
9 197 (3.81%) Project Manager
10 136 (2.63%) Support Engineer
11 128 (2.47%) IT Support
12 125 (2.42%) Data Analyst
13 112 (2.16%) Java Developer
14 99 (1.91%) IT Engineer
15 98 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.86%) Network Engineer
17 95 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
18 92 (1.78%) Administrator
18 92 (1.78%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 74 (1.43%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 291 (5.62%) REST
2 145 (2.80%) Kafka
3 141 (2.73%) .NET
4 135 (2.61%) RESTful
5 134 (2.59%) SOAP
6 133 (2.57%) Spring
7 127 (2.45%) React
8 114 (2.20%) CSS
9 108 (2.09%) HTML
10 106 (2.05%) Node.js
11 101 (1.95%) AngularJS
12 100 (1.93%) Spring Boot
13 99 (1.91%) LDAP
14 95 (1.84%) JSON
14 95 (1.84%) Middleware
15 88 (1.70%) XML
16 71 (1.37%) PySpark
17 65 (1.26%) OAuth
18 55 (1.06%) Oracle Fusion
18 55 (1.06%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 258 (4.99%) Product Ownership
2 224 (4.33%) Onboarding
3 203 (3.92%) Data Centre
4 202 (3.90%) Cloud Native
5 157 (3.03%) Self-Motivation
6 149 (2.88%) Analytical Mindset
7 143 (2.76%) Management Information System
8 118 (2.28%) Distributed Systems
9 113 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
9 113 (2.18%) Virtual Team
10 112 (2.16%) Data Protection Act
11 104 (2.01%) Data Structures
12 95 (1.84%) Enterprise Software
13 71 (1.37%) Driving Licence
14 66 (1.28%) Security Posture
15 60 (1.16%) Mobile App
16 59 (1.14%) Algorithms
17 55 (1.06%) AI Agents
18 51 (0.99%) Hybrid Cloud
19 49 (0.95%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 588 (11.36%) Windows
2 302 (5.84%) Linux
3 112 (2.16%) Windows 10
4 109 (2.11%) Windows Server
5 97 (1.87%) Android
5 97 (1.87%) Unix
6 88 (1.70%) Apple iOS
7 74 (1.43%) Mac OS
8 53 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 22 (0.43%) Ubuntu
10 15 (0.29%) CentOS
10 15 (0.29%) VMS
11 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
12 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
12 8 (0.15%) zOS
13 7 (0.14%) Debian
14 4 (0.077%) Solaris
14 4 (0.077%) Windows 8
14 4 (0.077%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,403 (27.12%) Agile
2 868 (16.78%) CI/CD
3 782 (15.11%) Continuous Improvement
4 781 (15.09%) DevOps
5 737 (14.24%) Stakeholder Management
6 573 (11.07%) Decision-Making
7 563 (10.88%) AI
8 560 (10.82%) Analytics
9 557 (10.77%) Migration
10 454 (8.77%) Project Management
11 447 (8.64%) Data Modelling
12 430 (8.31%) Customer Service
13 428 (8.27%) Stakeholder Engagement
14 419 (8.10%) Validation
15 408 (7.89%) Business Intelligence
16 407 (7.87%) ITIL
17 391 (7.56%) Test Automation
18 359 (6.94%) Scrum
19 352 (6.80%) Change Management
20 319 (6.17%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 931 (17.99%) Python
2 893 (17.26%) SQL
3 422 (8.16%) Java
4 319 (6.17%) PowerShell
5 273 (5.28%) JavaScript
6 199 (3.85%) C#
7 166 (3.21%) TypeScript
8 118 (2.28%) Bash
9 77 (1.49%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.41%) C++
11 57 (1.10%) Shell Script
12 50 (0.97%) Go
13 44 (0.85%) R
14 38 (0.73%) Bicep
14 38 (0.73%) C
15 35 (0.68%) T-SQL
16 34 (0.66%) Perl
17 32 (0.62%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 30 (0.58%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,129 (21.82%) Security Cleared
2 773 (14.94%) SC Cleared
3 628 (12.14%) Degree
4 202 (3.90%) Computer Science Degree
5 195 (3.77%) DV Cleared
6 165 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 138 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
8 125 (2.42%) Microsoft Certification
9 91 (1.76%) CISSP
10 87 (1.68%) PMP
11 81 (1.57%) PMI Certification
12 77 (1.49%) CCNA
13 73 (1.41%) Master's Degree
14 71 (1.37%) A+ Certification
15 67 (1.29%) Network+ Certification
16 65 (1.26%) Azure Certification
17 62 (1.20%) CISM
18 58 (1.12%) MCSE
19 47 (0.91%) CCNP
20 37 (0.72%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 341 (6.59%) Data Quality
2 295 (5.70%) QA
3 152 (2.94%) GDPR
4 101 (1.95%) Accessibility
5 98 (1.89%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 92 (1.78%) PMO
7 84 (1.62%) NIST
8 76 (1.47%) SLA
9 52 (1.01%) GRC
10 28 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 28 (0.54%) PCI DSS
10 28 (0.54%) WCAG
11 26 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.41%) ISO 20022
13 17 (0.33%) PSD2
14 16 (0.31%) IFRS
15 15 (0.29%) NCSC
16 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
17 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 385 (7.44%) Active Directory
2 337 (6.51%) Docker
3 112 (2.16%) VMware Infrastructure
4 40 (0.77%) vSphere
5 36 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.44%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.43%) Firmware
9 19 (0.37%) VMware ESXi
10 18 (0.35%) Virtual Machines
11 14 (0.27%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) IAG
14 6 (0.12%) RACF
15 4 (0.077%) ACF2
15 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.077%) NFS
15 4 (0.077%) Snort
15 4 (0.077%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 412 (7.96%) Kubernetes
2 275 (5.32%) Terraform
3 179 (3.46%) Ansible
4 118 (2.28%) Microsoft Intune
5 115 (2.22%) Grafana
6 90 (1.74%) Prometheus
7 79 (1.53%) SCCM
8 41 (0.79%) FortiGate
8 41 (0.79%) vCenter Server
9 39 (0.75%) Single Sign-On
10 27 (0.52%) Kibana
11 24 (0.46%) Puppet
12 22 (0.43%) Argo
12 22 (0.43%) Control-M
13 21 (0.41%) Nessus
14 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 12 (0.23%) WSUS
17 11 (0.21%) SCOM
18 10 (0.19%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 943 (18.23%) Microsoft
2 346 (6.69%) Oracle
3 297 (5.74%) SAP
4 227 (4.39%) ServiceNow
5 190 (3.67%) VMware
6 153 (2.96%) Databricks
7 148 (2.86%) Google
8 131 (2.53%) Cisco
9 123 (2.38%) Splunk
10 110 (2.13%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.62%) Dell
12 73 (1.41%) CyberArk
13 68 (1.31%) BeyondTrust
14 64 (1.24%) Red Hat
15 61 (1.18%) Workday
16 54 (1.04%) Adobe
17 52 (1.01%) Palo Alto
18 49 (0.95%) Citrix
18 49 (0.95%) HP
19 47 (0.91%) F5