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

6 months to
19 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 5,284 5,072 4,757
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.46% 17.01% 10.84%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.32% 18.68% 12.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,070 3,140 2,854
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £381 £379 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £620
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £451 £465 £475
% change year-on-year -3.12% -2.11% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 409 280 427
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.49 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.51 £21.95 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.56% +35.24% -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 £19.00 £15.14
% change year-on-year -1.11% +25.50% -70.40%

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 42,883 27,154 37,300
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.85% 91.05% 85.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,719 17,238 23,736
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.49% -3.81% -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 2,572 1,254 2,607
10th Percentile £14.70 £14.20 £12.70
25th Percentile £20.07 £17.79 £16.04
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.40 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +73.07% -32.27% +7.05%
75th Percentile £68.00 £55.19 £61.30
90th Percentile £82.25 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.08 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.46% -34.22% +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 19 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 19 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 19 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 4,518 £500 - 2,810
UK excluding London -5 2,838 £451 -3.12% 2,435
London -12 1,910 £520 +3.43% 800
Work from Home -5 1,496 £488 -2.50% 1,135
North of England -11 720 £449 -5.53% 607
South East -7 691 £488 -2.50% 754
Midlands -9 508 £464 +9.18% 415
West Midlands -11 366 £469 +4.22% 233
North West -10 346 £433 -8.95% 342
Yorkshire -6 331 £455 -4.16% 184
South West -4 319 £500 - 289
Scotland -3 286 £438 -5.91% 110
East of England -2 252 £450 -3.54% 230
East Midlands -2 140 £449 +21.88% 183
Wales -1 66 £468 +41.17% 49
North East -18 49 £370 -17.78% 95
Northern Ireland -7 23 £380 -10.59% 71
Channel Islands -2 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
1 223 (4.22%) Confluence
2 163 (3.08%) SharePoint
3 85 (1.61%) Microsoft Exchange
4 78 (1.48%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.95%) Apache
6 49 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 41 (0.78%) SAS
8 32 (0.61%) CMS
9 27 (0.51%) 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
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 305 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 216 (4.09%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.02%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 73 (1.38%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.27%) Microsoft Project
6 34 (0.64%) Spreadsheet
7 23 (0.44%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 22 (0.42%) Chatbot
9 14 (0.26%) AutoCAD
10 13 (0.25%) Sketch
11 11 (0.21%) Revit
12 10 (0.19%) CATIA
13 8 (0.15%) CPLEX
14 7 (0.13%) Trello
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
16 5 (0.095%) Maya
17 4 (0.076%) Acrobat
17 4 (0.076%) Adobe XD
Business Applications
1 131 (2.48%) SAP S/4HANA
2 41 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.45%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.34%) Aladdin
6 16 (0.30%) NetSuite
6 16 (0.30%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) SAP GRC
8 13 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
8 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.23%) Payment Gateway
10 11 (0.21%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.19%) SAP SD
12 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 8 (0.15%) NEC Housing
13 8 (0.15%) Salesforce CRM
13 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
14 7 (0.13%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 1,059 (20.04%) Azure
2 788 (14.91%) AWS
3 408 (7.72%) Power Platform
4 367 (6.95%) Microsoft 365
5 302 (5.72%) GCP
6 237 (4.49%) Azure DevOps
7 186 (3.52%) GitHub
8 177 (3.35%) Entra ID
9 138 (2.61%) SaaS
9 138 (2.61%) Serverless
10 94 (1.78%) GitHub Actions
11 91 (1.72%) Amazon S3
12 80 (1.51%) AWS Lambda
13 73 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
14 69 (1.31%) Power Automate
15 66 (1.25%) Snowflake
16 65 (1.23%) Azure Data Factory
17 61 (1.15%) PowerApps
18 58 (1.10%) OpenShift
19 49 (0.93%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 191 (3.61%) DNS
2 162 (3.07%) Firewall
3 115 (2.18%) TCP/IP
4 114 (2.16%) VPN
5 110 (2.08%) WAN
6 103 (1.95%) DHCP
7 90 (1.70%) Network Security
8 81 (1.53%) LAN
9 80 (1.51%) SAN
10 73 (1.38%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.97%) VLAN
12 50 (0.95%) BGP
13 46 (0.87%) SD-WAN
14 41 (0.78%) OSPF
15 33 (0.62%) 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%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 321 (6.07%) Power BI
2 204 (3.86%) SQL Server
3 156 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
4 143 (2.71%) Relational Database
5 136 (2.57%) PostgreSQL
6 113 (2.14%) MongoDB
7 101 (1.91%) Metadata
8 93 (1.76%) Data Lake
8 93 (1.76%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.68%) Tableau
10 75 (1.42%) Big Data
11 52 (0.98%) Oracle Database
12 51 (0.97%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 49 (0.93%) MySQL
14 48 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
15 36 (0.68%) Hadoop
16 30 (0.57%) Amazon RDS
17 28 (0.53%) DynamoDB
17 28 (0.53%) Power Query
18 27 (0.51%) Db2
Development Applications
1 505 (9.56%) JIRA
2 281 (5.32%) Git
3 178 (3.37%) Jenkins
4 127 (2.40%) GitLab
5 63 (1.19%) Selenium
6 41 (0.78%) Postman
7 34 (0.64%) REST Assured
8 28 (0.53%) Bitbucket
8 28 (0.53%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.49%) Cypress.io
10 22 (0.42%) JUnit
11 17 (0.32%) Mockito
11 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.30%) JMeter
12 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
13 15 (0.28%) SonarQube
14 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
15 12 (0.23%) Maven
15 12 (0.23%) SpecFlow
16 11 (0.21%) Gradle
General
1 2,743 (51.91%) Social Skills
2 2,068 (39.14%) Analytical Skills
3 1,227 (23.22%) Finance
4 482 (9.12%) Public Sector
5 392 (7.42%) Banking
6 210 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 194 (3.67%) Documentation Skills
8 185 (3.50%) Retail
9 152 (2.88%) Legal
10 144 (2.73%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 113 (2.14%) Influencing Skills
12 110 (2.08%) Manufacturing
13 109 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
14 103 (1.95%) Front Office
15 97 (1.84%) Telecoms
16 90 (1.70%) Marketing
17 81 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 74 (1.40%) Back Office
19 60 (1.14%) Law
20 59 (1.12%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 725 (13.72%) Analyst
2 614 (11.62%) Developer
3 452 (8.55%) Senior
4 366 (6.93%) Architect
5 344 (6.51%) Lead
6 275 (5.20%) Business Analyst
7 259 (4.90%) Consultant
8 240 (4.54%) Data Engineer
9 178 (3.37%) Project Manager
10 166 (3.14%) IT Support
11 160 (3.03%) Support Engineer
12 118 (2.23%) Data Analyst
13 114 (2.16%) Administrator
14 113 (2.14%) IT Engineer
15 110 (2.08%) Solutions Architect
16 109 (2.06%) Java Developer
17 96 (1.82%) Software Engineer
18 90 (1.70%) Network Engineer
19 86 (1.63%) Technical Support
20 85 (1.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 303 (5.73%) REST
2 158 (2.99%) .NET
3 151 (2.86%) Kafka
4 137 (2.59%) React
4 137 (2.59%) Spring
5 132 (2.50%) RESTful
6 131 (2.48%) SOAP
7 120 (2.27%) CSS
8 114 (2.16%) JSON
9 105 (1.99%) HTML
10 104 (1.97%) Middleware
11 101 (1.91%) Spring Boot
12 92 (1.74%) XML
13 89 (1.68%) AngularJS
14 85 (1.61%) Node.js
15 75 (1.42%) LDAP
15 75 (1.42%) PySpark
16 64 (1.21%) Web Services
17 58 (1.10%) OAuth
18 46 (0.87%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 262 (4.96%) Product Ownership
2 242 (4.58%) Onboarding
3 223 (4.22%) Cloud Native
4 202 (3.82%) Data Centre
5 179 (3.39%) Self-Motivation
6 149 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
7 142 (2.69%) Management Information System
8 137 (2.59%) Distributed Systems
9 132 (2.50%) Legacy Systems
10 130 (2.46%) Enterprise Software
11 122 (2.31%) Data Protection Act
12 114 (2.16%) Virtual Team
13 110 (2.08%) Data Structures
14 71 (1.34%) Algorithms
15 70 (1.32%) Driving Licence
16 67 (1.27%) Security Posture
17 63 (1.19%) AI Agents
18 54 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (0.98%) Derivative
20 49 (0.93%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 638 (12.07%) Windows
2 278 (5.26%) Linux
3 121 (2.29%) Windows Server
4 115 (2.18%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.95%) Unix
6 86 (1.63%) Mac OS
7 85 (1.61%) Android
8 82 (1.55%) Apple iOS
9 47 (0.89%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.42%) Ubuntu
11 14 (0.26%) CentOS
11 14 (0.26%) VMS
12 12 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
13 10 (0.19%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) Solaris
16 5 (0.095%) Debian
17 4 (0.076%) AIX
17 4 (0.076%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,403 (26.55%) Agile
2 890 (16.84%) Continuous Improvement
3 869 (16.45%) CI/CD
4 833 (15.76%) Stakeholder Management
5 802 (15.18%) DevOps
6 619 (11.71%) AI
7 593 (11.22%) Decision-Making
8 570 (10.79%) Migration
9 569 (10.77%) Analytics
10 494 (9.35%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 478 (9.05%) Customer Service
12 464 (8.78%) ITIL
13 437 (8.27%) Data Modelling
14 435 (8.23%) Validation
15 422 (7.99%) Business Intelligence
16 398 (7.53%) Project Management
17 385 (7.29%) Test Automation
18 371 (7.02%) Scrum
19 347 (6.57%) Change Management
20 325 (6.15%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 949 (17.96%) SQL
2 936 (17.71%) Python
3 412 (7.80%) Java
4 308 (5.83%) PowerShell
5 275 (5.20%) JavaScript
6 199 (3.77%) C#
7 129 (2.44%) TypeScript
8 107 (2.02%) Bash
9 85 (1.61%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.38%) C++
11 48 (0.91%) Shell Script
12 44 (0.83%) Go
13 43 (0.81%) T-SQL
14 41 (0.78%) C
15 39 (0.74%) R
16 34 (0.64%) Perl
17 33 (0.62%) Apex Code
18 32 (0.61%) Bicep
18 32 (0.61%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 30 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,123 (21.25%) Security Cleared
2 768 (14.53%) SC Cleared
3 634 (12.00%) Degree
4 195 (3.69%) DV Cleared
5 185 (3.50%) Computer Science Degree
6 161 (3.05%) BPSS Clearance
7 141 (2.67%) Microsoft Certification
8 133 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
9 92 (1.74%) CISSP
10 78 (1.48%) PMP
11 77 (1.46%) A+ Certification
12 76 (1.44%) CCNA
13 70 (1.32%) Azure Certification
13 70 (1.32%) PMI Certification
14 68 (1.29%) Master's Degree
15 64 (1.21%) CISM
15 64 (1.21%) Network+ Certification
16 57 (1.08%) MCSE
17 41 (0.78%) AWS Certification
18 39 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 360 (6.81%) Data Quality
2 276 (5.22%) QA
3 147 (2.78%) GDPR
4 126 (2.38%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.91%) SLA
6 94 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.51%) PMO
8 77 (1.46%) NIST
9 56 (1.06%) GRC
10 27 (0.51%) Actionable Recommendations
11 25 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.45%) 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%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.23%) PSD2
17 11 (0.21%) Cyber Essentials
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 393 (7.44%) Active Directory
2 325 (6.15%) Docker
3 112 (2.12%) VMware Infrastructure
4 43 (0.81%) 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 25 (0.47%) 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
1 397 (7.51%) Kubernetes
2 286 (5.41%) Terraform
3 169 (3.20%) Ansible
4 134 (2.54%) Microsoft Intune
5 107 (2.02%) Grafana
6 95 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 78 (1.48%) SCCM
8 49 (0.93%) vCenter Server
9 45 (0.85%) FortiGate
10 40 (0.76%) Single Sign-On
11 24 (0.45%) 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 (0.26%) WSUS
18 13 (0.25%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 989 (18.72%) Microsoft
2 357 (6.76%) Oracle
3 311 (5.89%) SAP
4 298 (5.64%) ServiceNow
5 177 (3.35%) VMware
6 151 (2.86%) Google
7 136 (2.57%) Databricks
8 123 (2.33%) Salesforce
9 121 (2.29%) Cisco
9 121 (2.29%) Splunk
10 75 (1.42%) Dell
11 73 (1.38%) Workday
12 64 (1.21%) Adobe
13 58 (1.10%) Red Hat
14 56 (1.06%) CyberArk
15 53 (1.00%) MuleSoft
16 52 (0.98%) Dynatrace
17 51 (0.97%) Citrix
18 49 (0.93%) BeyondTrust
19 44 (0.83%) Talend