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

6 months to
25 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 5,354 5,094 4,731
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.52% 16.91% 10.86%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.38% 18.57% 12.75%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,105 3,141 2,847
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £380 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £620
90th Percentile £709 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £463 £475
% change year-on-year -2.70% -2.63% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 418 284 423
10th Percentile £13.02 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.50 £15.44 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.44 £21.95 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -6.88% +35.24% -68.79%
75th Percentile £38.94 £38.75 £33.41
90th Percentile £73.23 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.79 £18.85 £15.39
% change year-on-year -0.32% +22.52% -69.23%

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 43,238 27,425 37,092
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.97% 91.06% 85.15%
Number of daily rates quoted 26,959 17,371 23,647
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £514 £505 £525
Median % change year-on-year +1.78% -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 2,600 1,291 2,584
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £12.65
25th Percentile £20.09 £17.70 £16.06
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £37.50
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -32.93% +7.14%
75th Percentile £68.00 £54.88 £61.30
90th Percentile £81.25 £71.25 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.04 £38.12
% change year-on-year +79.73% -34.32% +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 25 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 25 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 25 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 4,589 £495 -1.00% 2,694
UK excluding London -5 2,874 £450 -2.70% 2,285
London -12 1,950 £519 +3.71% 759
Work from Home -7 1,503 £488 -2.50% 999
North of England -11 721 £445 -6.26% 568
South East -6 705 £488 -2.50% 727
Midlands -9 517 £450 +5.88% 417
West Midlands -9 376 £464 +3.11% 229
North West -11 351 £441 -7.11% 310
Yorkshire -6 327 £450 -5.26% 189
South West -4 324 £500 - 260
Scotland -3 287 £438 -5.66% 99
East of England -2 259 £450 -3.64% 242
East Midlands -2 139 £449 +22.21% 188
Wales -2 67 £468 +32.40% 38
North East -17 49 £363 -19.44% 87
Northern Ireland -7 23 £380 -10.59% 24
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
1 220 (4.11%) Confluence
2 164 (3.06%) SharePoint
3 87 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 80 (1.49%) Apache Spark
5 51 (0.95%) Apache
6 50 (0.93%) Apache Airflow
7 41 (0.77%) SAS
8 32 (0.60%) CMS
9 28 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
10 17 (0.32%) WebLogic
11 11 (0.21%) ArcGIS
11 11 (0.21%) CICS
11 11 (0.21%) Jupyter
11 11 (0.21%) nginx
11 11 (0.21%) WebSphere
12 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
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
1 303 (5.66%) Microsoft Excel
2 227 (4.24%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.00%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 77 (1.44%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.18%) Microsoft Project
6 36 (0.67%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 23 (0.43%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 14 (0.26%) AutoCAD
10 12 (0.22%) 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 (0.093%) Maya
17 3 (0.056%) Navisworks
17 3 (0.056%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 137 (2.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.80%) Dynamics CRM
3 26 (0.49%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Remedy ITSM
5 18 (0.34%) NetSuite
6 17 (0.32%) Aladdin
7 16 (0.30%) SAP GRC
7 16 (0.30%) Workday HCM
8 15 (0.28%) Oracle ERP
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Payables
10 12 (0.22%) Payment Gateway
10 12 (0.22%) SAP SD
10 12 (0.22%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.22%) Teamcenter
11 10 (0.19%) Finacle
11 10 (0.19%) SAP HCM
12 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 8 (0.15%) NEC Housing
13 8 (0.15%) SAP ERP
14 7 (0.13%) Loan IQ
Cloud Services
1 1,061 (19.82%) Azure
2 804 (15.02%) AWS
3 409 (7.64%) Power Platform
4 372 (6.95%) Microsoft 365
5 301 (5.62%) GCP
6 246 (4.59%) Azure DevOps
7 186 (3.47%) GitHub
8 180 (3.36%) Entra ID
9 142 (2.65%) SaaS
10 140 (2.61%) Serverless
11 95 (1.77%) Amazon S3
12 94 (1.76%) GitHub Actions
13 82 (1.53%) AWS Lambda
14 74 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
15 72 (1.34%) Power Automate
16 65 (1.21%) Snowflake
17 64 (1.20%) Azure Data Factory
18 62 (1.16%) OpenShift
18 62 (1.16%) PowerApps
19 49 (0.92%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 204 (3.81%) DNS
2 166 (3.10%) Firewall
3 119 (2.22%) TCP/IP
4 116 (2.17%) VPN
5 112 (2.09%) DHCP
6 107 (2.00%) WAN
7 93 (1.74%) Network Security
8 84 (1.57%) SAN
9 82 (1.53%) LAN
10 73 (1.36%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.95%) VLAN
12 49 (0.92%) BGP
13 42 (0.78%) SD-WAN
14 41 (0.77%) OSPF
15 36 (0.67%) VoIP
15 36 (0.67%) Wireless
16 28 (0.52%) MPLS
17 27 (0.50%) VXLAN
18 22 (0.41%) NAS
19 21 (0.39%) BIG-IP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 321 (6.00%) Power BI
2 211 (3.94%) SQL Server
3 154 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (2.76%) Relational Database
5 140 (2.61%) PostgreSQL
6 112 (2.09%) MongoDB
7 101 (1.89%) Metadata
8 92 (1.72%) Data Lake
8 92 (1.72%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.66%) Tableau
10 76 (1.42%) Big Data
11 58 (1.08%) Oracle Database
12 52 (0.97%) MySQL
13 49 (0.92%) Oracle Reports
13 49 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 36 (0.67%) Hadoop
15 32 (0.60%) Amazon RDS
16 29 (0.54%) Db2
17 28 (0.52%) DynamoDB
17 28 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 505 (9.43%) JIRA
2 291 (5.44%) Git
3 187 (3.49%) Jenkins
4 132 (2.47%) GitLab
5 66 (1.23%) Selenium
6 44 (0.82%) Postman
7 35 (0.65%) REST Assured
8 30 (0.56%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Cypress.io
10 26 (0.49%) JUnit
11 25 (0.47%) Bitbucket
12 19 (0.35%) Mockito
12 19 (0.35%) WebDriver
13 16 (0.30%) JMeter
14 15 (0.28%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.28%) Sonatype Nexus
15 14 (0.26%) Gradle
15 14 (0.26%) Maven
15 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
16 11 (0.21%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 2,782 (51.96%) Social Skills
2 2,107 (39.35%) Analytical Skills
3 1,257 (23.48%) Finance
4 502 (9.38%) Public Sector
5 407 (7.60%) Banking
6 214 (4.00%) Organisational Skills
7 202 (3.77%) Documentation Skills
8 189 (3.53%) Retail
9 153 (2.86%) Legal
10 151 (2.82%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 120 (2.24%) Manufacturing
12 117 (2.19%) Influencing Skills
13 115 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
14 110 (2.05%) Front Office
15 97 (1.81%) Telecoms
16 92 (1.72%) Marketing
17 90 (1.68%) Investment Banking
18 80 (1.49%) Back Office
19 60 (1.12%) Aerospace
20 57 (1.06%) Law
Job Titles
1 732 (13.67%) Analyst
2 615 (11.49%) Developer
3 466 (8.70%) Senior
4 372 (6.95%) Architect
5 361 (6.74%) Lead
6 280 (5.23%) Business Analyst
7 258 (4.82%) Consultant
8 242 (4.52%) Data Engineer
9 175 (3.27%) IT Support
9 175 (3.27%) Project Manager
10 168 (3.14%) Support Engineer
11 120 (2.24%) IT Engineer
12 118 (2.20%) Administrator
12 118 (2.20%) Data Analyst
13 115 (2.15%) Java Developer
14 108 (2.02%) Solutions Architect
15 101 (1.89%) Software Engineer
16 90 (1.68%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 88 (1.64%) Network Engineer
18 87 (1.62%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 305 (5.70%) REST
2 157 (2.93%) .NET
3 154 (2.88%) Kafka
4 145 (2.71%) Spring
5 138 (2.58%) React
6 132 (2.47%) RESTful
7 128 (2.39%) SOAP
8 119 (2.22%) CSS
9 115 (2.15%) JSON
10 107 (2.00%) Spring Boot
11 106 (1.98%) Middleware
12 105 (1.96%) HTML
13 97 (1.81%) XML
14 86 (1.61%) AngularJS
15 85 (1.59%) Node.js
16 78 (1.46%) PySpark
17 68 (1.27%) LDAP
18 62 (1.16%) Web Services
19 59 (1.10%) OAuth
20 46 (0.86%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 270 (5.04%) Product Ownership
2 244 (4.56%) Onboarding
3 228 (4.26%) Cloud Native
4 204 (3.81%) Data Centre
5 186 (3.47%) Self-Motivation
6 156 (2.91%) Analytical Mindset
7 141 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
7 141 (2.63%) Management Information System
8 131 (2.45%) Legacy Systems
9 127 (2.37%) Enterprise Software
10 123 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
11 116 (2.17%) Virtual Team
12 115 (2.15%) Data Structures
13 72 (1.34%) Algorithms
14 70 (1.31%) Driving Licence
15 63 (1.18%) AI Agents
16 61 (1.14%) Security Posture
17 54 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 53 (0.99%) CMDB
19 52 (0.97%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 653 (12.20%) Windows
2 284 (5.30%) Linux
3 125 (2.33%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.17%) Windows 10
5 104 (1.94%) Unix
6 86 (1.61%) Mac OS
7 85 (1.59%) Android
8 83 (1.55%) Apple iOS
9 54 (1.01%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 23 (0.43%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.24%) CentOS
12 12 (0.22%) VMS
12 12 (0.22%) 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 (0.093%) Debian
17 4 (0.075%) AIX
17 4 (0.075%) HPUX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,409 (26.32%) Agile
2 926 (17.30%) Continuous Improvement
3 874 (16.32%) CI/CD
4 868 (16.21%) Stakeholder Management
5 820 (15.32%) DevOps
6 634 (11.84%) AI
7 603 (11.26%) Decision-Making
8 581 (10.85%) Analytics
9 575 (10.74%) Migration
10 506 (9.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 485 (9.06%) Customer Service
12 477 (8.91%) ITIL
13 443 (8.27%) Validation
14 432 (8.07%) Data Modelling
15 422 (7.88%) Business Intelligence
16 393 (7.34%) Test Automation
17 387 (7.23%) Project Management
18 374 (6.99%) Scrum
19 344 (6.43%) Change Management
20 329 (6.14%) Roadmaps
Programming Languages
1 971 (18.14%) SQL
2 937 (17.50%) Python
3 419 (7.83%) Java
4 298 (5.57%) PowerShell
5 271 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.62%) C#
7 125 (2.33%) TypeScript
8 117 (2.19%) Bash
9 88 (1.64%) PL/SQL
10 73 (1.36%) C++
11 48 (0.90%) Shell Script
12 47 (0.88%) Go
13 45 (0.84%) T-SQL
14 43 (0.80%) C
15 38 (0.71%) R
16 34 (0.64%) Bicep
17 33 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 32 (0.60%) Apex Code
19 30 (0.56%) Scala
20 28 (0.52%) Perl
Qualifications
1 1,154 (21.55%) Security Cleared
2 790 (14.76%) SC Cleared
3 644 (12.03%) Degree
4 196 (3.66%) DV Cleared
5 191 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 159 (2.97%) BPSS Clearance
7 146 (2.73%) Microsoft Certification
8 135 (2.52%) Cisco Certification
9 89 (1.66%) CISSP
10 79 (1.48%) A+ Certification
11 78 (1.46%) CCNA
11 78 (1.46%) PMP
12 70 (1.31%) PMI Certification
13 69 (1.29%) Azure Certification
14 65 (1.21%) Master's Degree
15 64 (1.20%) Network+ Certification
16 59 (1.10%) CISM
17 57 (1.06%) MCSE
18 44 (0.82%) AWS Certification
19 39 (0.73%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 371 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 290 (5.42%) QA
3 149 (2.78%) GDPR
4 127 (2.37%) Accessibility
5 108 (2.02%) SLA
6 93 (1.74%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 80 (1.49%) PMO
8 75 (1.40%) NIST
9 56 (1.05%) GRC
10 27 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
11 26 (0.49%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 24 (0.45%) PCI DSS
12 24 (0.45%) WCAG
13 18 (0.34%) ISO 20022
14 16 (0.30%) COBIT
14 16 (0.30%) NCSC
15 13 (0.24%) GxP
16 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
16 12 (0.22%) PSD2
17 11 (0.21%) IFRS
System Software
1 388 (7.25%) Active Directory
2 337 (6.29%) Docker
3 115 (2.15%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.82%) vSphere
5 40 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 37 (0.69%) VMware ESXi
7 35 (0.65%) Hyper-V
8 27 (0.50%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.47%) Virtual Desktop
10 23 (0.43%) Firmware
11 19 (0.35%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) IAG
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.093%) NFS
15 4 (0.075%) ACF2
15 4 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.075%) RACF
15 4 (0.075%) Snort
16 3 (0.056%) BitLocker
Systems Management
1 407 (7.60%) Kubernetes
2 296 (5.53%) Terraform
3 171 (3.19%) Ansible
4 130 (2.43%) Microsoft Intune
5 109 (2.04%) Grafana
6 96 (1.79%) Prometheus
7 81 (1.51%) SCCM
8 49 (0.92%) vCenter Server
9 43 (0.80%) Single Sign-On
10 41 (0.77%) FortiGate
11 25 (0.47%) Control-M
12 21 (0.39%) Nessus
13 20 (0.37%) Argo
13 20 (0.37%) Kibana
14 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
14 17 (0.32%) SCOM
14 17 (0.32%) WSUS
15 16 (0.30%) Puppet
16 15 (0.28%) Jamf Pro
17 13 (0.24%) Active Directory Federation Services
Vendors
1 1,016 (18.98%) Microsoft
2 373 (6.97%) Oracle
3 320 (5.98%) SAP
4 310 (5.79%) ServiceNow
5 180 (3.36%) VMware
6 155 (2.90%) Google
7 135 (2.52%) Databricks
8 123 (2.30%) Salesforce
8 123 (2.30%) Splunk
9 119 (2.22%) Cisco
10 75 (1.40%) Dell
10 75 (1.40%) Workday
11 64 (1.20%) Red Hat
12 61 (1.14%) Adobe
13 58 (1.08%) Dynatrace
14 52 (0.97%) MuleSoft
15 50 (0.93%) Citrix
15 50 (0.93%) CyberArk
16 46 (0.86%) Apple
16 46 (0.86%) IBM