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

6 months to
18 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,360 4,949 4,777
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.62% 16.82% 10.92%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.68% 18.53% 12.64%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,248 3,107 2,951
10th Percentile £275 £250 £213
25th Percentile £388 £399 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £508
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.48% -3.33%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £468 £468 £475
% change year-on-year +0.11% -1.58% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 334 237 409
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.54 £11.06
25th Percentile £14.96 £16.95 £13.82
Median hourly rate £21.25 £24.18 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -12.12% +38.17% -57.70%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.50 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.69 £22.00 £15.00
% change year-on-year -15.07% +46.67% -50.61%

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 39,180 26,703 37,785
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.74% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,749 17,293 24,471
10th Percentile £316 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.31% -0.48% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £483 £500
% change year-on-year +0.41% -3.40% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,327 1,032 2,410
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.85 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.80 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.50 £30.00 £33.78
Median % change year-on-year +25.00% -11.18% -5.92%
75th Percentile £65.25 £62.50 £57.83
90th Percentile £78.10 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £28.75 £34.21
% change year-on-year +39.13% -15.96% -2.26%

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 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 18 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 18 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 -4 4,599 £492 -1.60% 3,207
UK excluding London -5 2,809 £468 +0.11% 2,660
London -9 1,987 £510 -2.86% 941
Work from Home 0 1,527 £475 -5.00% 1,179
North of England -5 783 £450 -5.26% 626
South East -5 664 £492 -1.60% 767
Midlands -4 512 £450 - 489
North West -5 381 £425 -12.82% 328
West Midlands -4 363 £475 +2.70% 274
Yorkshire -4 356 £465 -2.11% 210
South West -2 318 £500 - 306
Scotland 0 254 £425 -5.56% 144
East of England -4 204 £450 - 301
East Midlands -1 150 £420 +13.59% 215
Wales -2 69 £390 +17.76% 82
North East -2 55 £425 -16.26% 100
Northern Ireland 0 27 £430 +26.47% 27
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
1 225 (4.20%) Confluence
2 150 (2.80%) SharePoint
3 101 (1.88%) Microsoft Exchange
4 91 (1.70%) Apache Spark
5 66 (1.23%) SAS
6 65 (1.21%) Apache
7 47 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
8 30 (0.56%) CMS
9 19 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
13 7 (0.13%) JBoss
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 309 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.20%) Microsoft Office
3 119 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.49%) Microsoft Project
4 80 (1.49%) MS Visio
5 30 (0.56%) Spreadsheet
6 23 (0.43%) Chatbot
7 10 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 10 (0.19%) Sketch
8 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
9 7 (0.13%) CATIA
9 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.093%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.093%) Maya
12 4 (0.075%) InDesign
12 4 (0.075%) InVision
12 4 (0.075%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.056%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 103 (1.92%) SAP S/4HANA
2 38 (0.71%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.39%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
10 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
11 11 (0.21%) iTrent
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
12 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
14 8 (0.15%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 1,104 (20.60%) Azure
2 832 (15.52%) AWS
3 391 (7.29%) Power Platform
4 361 (6.74%) GCP
5 348 (6.49%) Microsoft 365
6 247 (4.61%) Azure DevOps
7 227 (4.24%) GitHub
8 171 (3.19%) Entra ID
9 170 (3.17%) Serverless
10 136 (2.54%) SaaS
11 120 (2.24%) GitHub Actions
12 109 (2.03%) Amazon S3
13 99 (1.85%) AWS Lambda
14 89 (1.66%) OpenShift
15 77 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
16 75 (1.40%) Snowflake
17 74 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
18 73 (1.36%) Power Automate
19 62 (1.16%) PowerApps
20 57 (1.06%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 202 (3.77%) Firewall
2 193 (3.60%) DNS
3 123 (2.29%) TCP/IP
4 116 (2.16%) Network Security
5 112 (2.09%) VPN
6 107 (2.00%) WAN
7 102 (1.90%) DHCP
8 84 (1.57%) LAN
9 72 (1.34%) SAN
10 63 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 55 (1.03%) BGP
12 52 (0.97%) VLAN
13 42 (0.78%) OSPF
14 36 (0.67%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.67%) VoIP
15 28 (0.52%) Internet
15 28 (0.52%) Wireless
16 27 (0.50%) MPLS
17 25 (0.47%) VXLAN
18 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (5.80%) Power BI
2 196 (3.66%) SQL Server
3 156 (2.91%) Data Warehouse
4 146 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
5 136 (2.54%) Relational Database
6 114 (2.13%) Metadata
7 95 (1.77%) MongoDB
7 95 (1.77%) NoSQL
8 89 (1.66%) Big Data
9 87 (1.62%) Tableau
10 83 (1.55%) Data Lake
11 65 (1.21%) Oracle Database
11 65 (1.21%) Oracle Reports
12 64 (1.19%) MySQL
13 47 (0.88%) Hadoop
14 46 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 37 (0.69%) Amazon RDS
15 37 (0.69%) Pentaho
16 36 (0.67%) DynamoDB
17 31 (0.58%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 514 (9.59%) JIRA
2 331 (6.18%) Git
3 233 (4.35%) Jenkins
4 155 (2.89%) GitLab
5 83 (1.55%) Selenium
6 47 (0.88%) JUnit
7 43 (0.80%) Postman
8 31 (0.58%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.41%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.41%) JMeter
11 22 (0.41%) Maven
12 21 (0.39%) Mockito
13 19 (0.35%) Sonatype Nexus
14 17 (0.32%) SonarQube
15 16 (0.30%) WebDriver
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
17 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,817 (52.56%) Social Skills
2 2,040 (38.06%) Analytical Skills
3 1,243 (23.19%) Finance
4 533 (9.94%) Public Sector
5 414 (7.72%) Banking
6 217 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (3.45%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (3.28%) Retail
9 170 (3.17%) Legal
10 141 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
11 132 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
12 122 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (1.83%) Front Office
14 91 (1.70%) Telecoms
15 86 (1.60%) Manufacturing
16 85 (1.59%) Marketing
17 78 (1.46%) Investment Banking
18 57 (1.06%) Financial Institution
19 55 (1.03%) Back Office
19 55 (1.03%) Military
Job Titles
1 736 (13.73%) Analyst
2 680 (12.69%) Developer
3 468 (8.73%) Senior
4 378 (7.05%) Architect
5 340 (6.34%) Lead
6 305 (5.69%) Business Analyst
7 280 (5.22%) Consultant
8 231 (4.31%) Data Engineer
9 206 (3.84%) Project Manager
10 131 (2.44%) Java Developer
11 130 (2.43%) Support Engineer
12 126 (2.35%) IT Support
13 111 (2.07%) Data Analyst
14 105 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
15 103 (1.92%) Administrator
16 95 (1.77%) Software Engineer
17 91 (1.70%) IT Engineer
18 88 (1.64%) Network Engineer
19 84 (1.57%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 84 (1.57%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 335 (6.25%) REST
2 172 (3.21%) Kafka
3 154 (2.87%) RESTful
4 151 (2.82%) SOAP
5 145 (2.71%) Spring
6 142 (2.65%) .NET
7 132 (2.46%) React
8 124 (2.31%) Node.js
9 109 (2.03%) Spring Boot
10 108 (2.01%) CSS
11 107 (2.00%) HTML
12 106 (1.98%) AngularJS
13 105 (1.96%) JSON
14 95 (1.77%) XML
15 92 (1.72%) LDAP
16 89 (1.66%) Middleware
17 79 (1.47%) OAuth
18 71 (1.32%) PySpark
19 61 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
20 56 (1.04%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 282 (5.26%) Product Ownership
2 220 (4.10%) Cloud Native
3 217 (4.05%) Onboarding
4 181 (3.38%) Data Centre
5 156 (2.91%) Management Information System
6 150 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
7 144 (2.69%) Analytical Mindset
8 112 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
9 109 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
10 106 (1.98%) Virtual Team
11 105 (1.96%) Data Structures
12 104 (1.94%) Legacy Systems
13 102 (1.90%) Enterprise Software
14 70 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 68 (1.27%) Driving Licence
16 66 (1.23%) Algorithms
17 63 (1.18%) Mobile App
18 59 (1.10%) Hybrid Cloud
19 55 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 50 (0.93%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 597 (11.14%) Windows
2 322 (6.01%) Linux
3 117 (2.18%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 96 (1.79%) Unix
6 89 (1.66%) Android
7 79 (1.47%) Apple iOS
8 70 (1.31%) Mac OS
9 62 (1.16%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.35%) VMS
11 17 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 11 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) zOS
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.11%) Debian
18 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
19 3 (0.056%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,514 (28.25%) Agile
2 939 (17.52%) CI/CD
3 840 (15.67%) DevOps
4 811 (15.13%) Continuous Improvement
5 792 (14.78%) Stakeholder Management
6 618 (11.53%) Analytics
7 578 (10.78%) Migration
8 572 (10.67%) Decision-Making
9 552 (10.30%) AI
10 481 (8.97%) Project Management
11 468 (8.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 460 (8.58%) Data Modelling
13 434 (8.10%) Validation
14 424 (7.91%) Business Intelligence
15 421 (7.85%) Test Automation
16 419 (7.82%) Customer Service
17 393 (7.33%) ITIL
18 392 (7.31%) Scrum
19 384 (7.16%) Change Management
20 347 (6.47%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,003 (18.71%) Python
2 937 (17.48%) SQL
3 466 (8.69%) Java
4 346 (6.46%) PowerShell
5 283 (5.28%) JavaScript
6 208 (3.88%) C#
7 179 (3.34%) TypeScript
8 144 (2.69%) Bash
9 83 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 65 (1.21%) C++
11 64 (1.19%) Shell Script
12 54 (1.01%) Go
13 43 (0.80%) Perl
13 43 (0.80%) R
14 42 (0.78%) Bicep
15 39 (0.73%) Scala
16 38 (0.71%) C
17 37 (0.69%) T-SQL
18 34 (0.63%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,174 (21.90%) Security Cleared
2 822 (15.34%) SC Cleared
3 658 (12.28%) Degree
4 223 (4.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 198 (3.69%) DV Cleared
6 177 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 132 (2.46%) Cisco Certification
8 118 (2.20%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.87%) CISSP
10 97 (1.81%) PMP
11 93 (1.74%) PMI Certification
12 86 (1.60%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.29%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.25%) CCNA
15 63 (1.18%) CISM
16 55 (1.03%) A+ Certification
17 54 (1.01%) CCNP
18 52 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
19 51 (0.95%) MCSE
20 39 (0.73%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 353 (6.59%) Data Quality
2 333 (6.21%) QA
3 156 (2.91%) GDPR
4 109 (2.03%) Accessibility
5 96 (1.79%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 96 (1.79%) PMO
6 86 (1.60%) NIST
7 74 (1.38%) SLA
8 46 (0.86%) GRC
9 35 (0.65%) WCAG
10 29 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
10 29 (0.54%) PCI DSS
11 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.39%) PSD2
13 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
14 16 (0.30%) IFRS
15 15 (0.28%) HL7
16 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
16 14 (0.26%) NCSC
17 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
System Software
1 397 (7.41%) Active Directory
2 396 (7.39%) Docker
3 122 (2.28%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.91%) vSphere
5 40 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.37%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) RACF
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 10 (0.19%) vCloud
13 9 (0.17%) ACF2
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
15 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.075%) NFS
15 4 (0.075%) Snort
Systems Management
1 473 (8.82%) Kubernetes
2 306 (5.71%) Terraform
3 184 (3.43%) Ansible
4 131 (2.44%) Microsoft Intune
5 124 (2.31%) Grafana
6 96 (1.79%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.57%) SCCM
8 42 (0.78%) Single Sign-On
9 40 (0.75%) vCenter Server
10 38 (0.71%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.56%) Kibana
12 29 (0.54%) Puppet
13 28 (0.52%) Argo
14 24 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 23 (0.43%) Control-M
15 23 (0.43%) Nessus
16 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 16 (0.30%) vRealize
18 14 (0.26%) WSUS
19 11 (0.21%) VxRail
Vendors
1 977 (18.23%) Microsoft
2 371 (6.92%) Oracle
3 281 (5.24%) SAP
4 233 (4.35%) ServiceNow
5 207 (3.86%) VMware
6 166 (3.10%) Databricks
7 165 (3.08%) Google
8 137 (2.56%) Cisco
9 125 (2.33%) Splunk
10 113 (2.11%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.47%) Red Hat
12 78 (1.46%) Dell
13 71 (1.32%) CyberArk
14 66 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
15 62 (1.16%) Citrix
16 58 (1.08%) Workday
17 57 (1.06%) Adobe
18 56 (1.04%) Talend
19 51 (0.95%) IBM
20 49 (0.91%) HP