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

6 months to
13 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 6 8
Rank change year-on-year -6 +2 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,932 4,997 4,669
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.80% 15.18% 12.45%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.75% 16.77% 14.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,292 2,979 2,706
10th Percentile £260 £238 £263
25th Percentile £388 £381 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £498 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.05% -2.50% -0.10%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £458 £475
% change year-on-year -1.64% -3.68% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 618 326 208
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.50
25th Percentile £14.11 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.38 £20.00 £16.75
Median % change year-on-year -8.10% +19.40% -67.19%
75th Percentile £35.22 £33.50 £31.30
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.58 £61.87
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.36% +15.96% -66.47%

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 46,512 29,792 32,258
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.69% 90.47% 86.03%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,938 18,529 19,417
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £737 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,382 1,881 1,250
10th Percentile £13.63 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.30 £20.03
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.54 £65.14 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -7.83%

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 October 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 October 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 October 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 5,117 £500 +2.04% 6,889
UK excluding London -2 3,189 £450 -1.64% 3,912
London -12 2,188 £525 +5.00% 3,363
Work from Home -4 1,596 £500 - 2,957
South East -3 826 £475 +5.56% 958
North of England -7 755 £450 -5.26% 960
Midlands -5 619 £450 +0.67% 574
West Midlands -8 446 £450 -5.26% 351
North West -9 375 £448 -2.19% 482
South West -5 318 £503 +8.65% 478
Scotland -3 305 £429 -4.67% 290
East of England 0 302 £438 -13.37% 406
Yorkshire -5 300 £475 -3.80% 321
East Midlands +2 169 £425 +13.33% 223
North East -8 82 £375 -16.67% 165
Wales -8 65 £468 +13.33% 113
Northern Ireland -5 27 £425 -18.27% 184
Channel Islands -2 5 £600 - 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
1 263 (4.43%) SharePoint
2 258 (4.35%) Confluence
3 94 (1.58%) Microsoft Exchange
4 63 (1.06%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.84%) Apache Airflow
6 48 (0.81%) Apache
7 27 (0.46%) CMS
8 25 (0.42%) SAS
9 24 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
10 18 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.27%) WebSphere
12 12 (0.20%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.19%) CICS
14 9 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.13%) IIS
16 7 (0.12%) Appian
16 7 (0.12%) WebLogic Portal
16 7 (0.12%) WordPress
17 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 364 (6.14%) Microsoft Excel
2 268 (4.52%) Microsoft Office
3 146 (2.46%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
5 66 (1.11%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.46%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 23 (0.39%) Spreadsheet
8 16 (0.27%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.27%) Revit
9 15 (0.25%) Sketch
10 11 (0.19%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.19%) Windchill
11 10 (0.17%) Trello
12 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
12 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
12 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
13 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
14 3 (0.051%) DaVinci Resolve
14 3 (0.051%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 131 (2.21%) SAP S/4HANA
2 57 (0.96%) Dynamics CRM
3 36 (0.61%) Oracle EBS
4 32 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 30 (0.51%) Workday HCM
6 28 (0.47%) SAP GRC
7 24 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
8 17 (0.29%) Oracle Payables
9 15 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
10 14 (0.24%) Oracle General Ledger
10 14 (0.24%) Teamcenter
11 13 (0.22%) Aladdin
11 13 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
12 12 (0.20%) SAP HCM
12 12 (0.20%) SAP SD
13 11 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
14 10 (0.17%) iTrent
14 10 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
14 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
14 10 (0.17%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,159 (19.54%) Azure
2 795 (13.40%) AWS
3 516 (8.70%) Microsoft 365
4 469 (7.91%) Power Platform
5 337 (5.68%) GCP
6 297 (5.01%) Azure DevOps
7 243 (4.10%) Entra ID
8 229 (3.86%) GitHub
9 144 (2.43%) SaaS
10 135 (2.28%) Serverless
11 120 (2.02%) Power Automate
12 105 (1.77%) Microsoft Copilot
13 103 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
14 98 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
15 95 (1.60%) PowerApps
16 83 (1.40%) Snowflake
17 79 (1.33%) OneDrive
18 66 (1.11%) OpenShift
19 64 (1.08%) Amazon S3
20 63 (1.06%) AWS CloudFormation
Communications & Networking
1 215 (3.62%) DNS
2 201 (3.39%) Firewall
3 158 (2.66%) VPN
4 128 (2.16%) TCP/IP
5 126 (2.12%) Network Security
6 124 (2.09%) WAN
7 123 (2.07%) DHCP
8 103 (1.74%) LAN
9 81 (1.37%) Wi-Fi
10 68 (1.15%) Wireless
11 51 (0.86%) SAN
11 51 (0.86%) VLAN
12 48 (0.81%) BGP
13 47 (0.79%) VoIP
14 33 (0.56%) Intranet
14 33 (0.56%) SD-WAN
15 32 (0.54%) MPLS
16 30 (0.51%) HTTP
17 29 (0.49%) Structured Cabling
18 27 (0.46%) Broadband
Database & Business Intelligence
1 347 (5.85%) Power BI
2 210 (3.54%) SQL Server
3 193 (3.25%) Relational Database
4 172 (2.90%) Data Warehouse
5 156 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
6 113 (1.90%) MongoDB
7 107 (1.80%) Metadata
8 90 (1.52%) NoSQL
9 80 (1.35%) Tableau
10 78 (1.31%) Data Lake
11 68 (1.15%) Oracle Database
12 65 (1.10%) MySQL
13 42 (0.71%) Big Data
14 39 (0.66%) Oracle Reports
15 38 (0.64%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 31 (0.52%) Db2
17 30 (0.51%) Power Query
18 29 (0.49%) Delta Lake
18 29 (0.49%) DynamoDB
19 28 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 519 (8.75%) JIRA
2 407 (6.86%) Git
3 221 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 154 (2.60%) GitLab
5 81 (1.37%) Selenium
6 54 (0.91%) Maven
7 50 (0.84%) Gradle
8 48 (0.81%) Cucumber
9 43 (0.72%) JUnit
10 42 (0.71%) Cypress.io
11 40 (0.67%) Postman
12 34 (0.57%) Bitbucket
13 30 (0.51%) REST Assured
14 29 (0.49%) SonarQube
15 24 (0.40%) JMeter
15 24 (0.40%) Mockito
16 20 (0.34%) Gatling
17 18 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
18 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
19 16 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 3,201 (53.96%) Social Skills
2 2,534 (42.72%) Analytical Skills
3 1,375 (23.18%) Finance
4 635 (10.70%) Public Sector
5 484 (8.16%) Banking
6 328 (5.53%) Organisational Skills
7 285 (4.80%) Manufacturing
8 201 (3.39%) Documentation Skills
9 184 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 177 (2.98%) Influencing Skills
11 162 (2.73%) Retail
12 158 (2.66%) Legal
13 127 (2.14%) Telecoms
14 126 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
15 123 (2.07%) Marketing
16 116 (1.96%) Front Office
17 104 (1.75%) Investment Banking
18 87 (1.47%) Aerospace
19 77 (1.30%) Back Office
20 66 (1.11%) Military
Job Titles
1 757 (12.76%) Analyst
2 747 (12.59%) Developer
3 581 (9.79%) Senior
4 431 (7.27%) Lead
5 317 (5.34%) Architect
6 286 (4.82%) Consultant
7 270 (4.55%) Business Analyst
8 237 (4.00%) IT Support
9 222 (3.74%) Support Engineer
10 198 (3.34%) Data Engineer
11 182 (3.07%) Administrator
12 174 (2.93%) Project Manager
13 142 (2.39%) IT Engineer
14 133 (2.24%) Java Developer
15 126 (2.12%) Data Analyst
16 118 (1.99%) Network Engineer
17 114 (1.92%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 112 (1.89%) DevOps Engineer
19 109 (1.84%) IT Support Engineer
20 102 (1.72%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 429 (7.23%) REST
2 360 (6.07%) Terraform
3 199 (3.35%) .NET
4 197 (3.32%) RESTful
5 171 (2.88%) SOAP
6 166 (2.80%) React
7 157 (2.65%) Kafka
8 146 (2.46%) Spring
9 141 (2.38%) HTML
10 140 (2.36%) XML
11 136 (2.29%) JSON
12 133 (2.24%) CSS
13 129 (2.17%) Web Services
14 126 (2.12%) Spring Boot
15 121 (2.04%) Middleware
16 102 (1.72%) Node.js
17 91 (1.53%) AngularJS
18 87 (1.47%) OAuth
19 70 (1.18%) PySpark
20 62 (1.05%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 346 (5.83%) Onboarding
2 292 (4.92%) Cloud Native
3 284 (4.79%) Product Ownership
4 233 (3.93%) Enterprise Software
5 228 (3.84%) Management Information System
6 224 (3.78%) Self-Motivation
7 178 (3.00%) Data Centre
8 156 (2.63%) Distributed Systems
9 148 (2.49%) Data Structures
10 127 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
11 123 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
12 118 (1.99%) Analytical Mindset
13 100 (1.69%) Virtual Team
14 91 (1.53%) Driving Licence
15 89 (1.50%) AI Agents
16 72 (1.21%) CMDB
17 64 (1.08%) Mobile App
17 64 (1.08%) NHS
18 62 (1.05%) Algorithms
19 59 (0.99%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 761 (12.83%) Windows
2 338 (5.70%) Linux
3 213 (3.59%) Windows Server
4 137 (2.31%) Windows 10
5 113 (1.90%) Unix
6 91 (1.53%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.47%) macOS
8 84 (1.42%) Android
9 57 (0.96%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.35%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.34%) VMS
12 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.22%) Solaris
13 13 (0.22%) zOS
14 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) CentOS
15 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
16 6 (0.10%) AIX
16 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
17 5 (0.084%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,658 (27.95%) Agile
2 1,521 (25.64%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,364 (22.99%) Continuous Improvement
4 1,037 (17.48%) CI/CD
5 921 (15.53%) DevOps
6 786 (13.25%) AI
7 686 (11.56%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 657 (11.08%) Decision-Making
9 601 (10.13%) Migration
10 571 (9.63%) Customer Service
11 565 (9.52%) Analytics
12 504 (8.50%) ITIL
13 501 (8.45%) Test Automation
14 497 (8.38%) Validation
15 444 (7.48%) Scrum
16 418 (7.05%) Data Modelling
17 401 (6.76%) Business Intelligence
18 393 (6.63%) Technical Leadership
19 392 (6.61%) Project Delivery
20 391 (6.59%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,005 (16.94%) SQL
2 887 (14.95%) Python
3 446 (7.52%) Java
4 363 (6.12%) JavaScript
5 344 (5.80%) PowerShell
6 231 (3.89%) C#
7 166 (2.80%) Bash
8 155 (2.61%) TypeScript
9 92 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 55 (0.93%) C++
11 51 (0.86%) Shell Script
12 50 (0.84%) T-SQL
13 43 (0.72%) Go
14 36 (0.61%) Bicep
14 36 (0.61%) Scala
15 33 (0.56%) Kotlin
16 28 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
16 28 (0.47%) Groovy
17 25 (0.42%) Perl
18 23 (0.39%) R
Qualifications
1 1,310 (22.08%) Security Cleared
2 950 (16.01%) SC Cleared
3 682 (11.50%) Degree
4 239 (4.03%) DV Cleared
5 206 (3.47%) Computer Science Degree
6 203 (3.42%) BPSS Clearance
7 134 (2.26%) Microsoft Certification
8 97 (1.64%) Cisco Certification
9 88 (1.48%) PMI Certification
10 85 (1.43%) Azure Certification
11 82 (1.38%) PMP
12 80 (1.35%) CISSP
13 61 (1.03%) Master's Degree
14 57 (0.96%) AWS Certification
15 56 (0.94%) DBS Check
16 52 (0.88%) A+ Certification
17 47 (0.79%) CISM
18 45 (0.76%) CCNA
19 43 (0.72%) CCNP
19 43 (0.72%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 439 (7.40%) Data Quality
2 397 (6.69%) QA
3 159 (2.68%) Accessibility
4 135 (2.28%) GDPR
5 127 (2.14%) SLA
6 107 (1.80%) PMO
7 90 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 66 (1.11%) GRC
9 63 (1.06%) NIST
10 40 (0.67%) WCAG
11 25 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.39%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.37%) GxP
13 22 (0.37%) NCSC
14 18 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 18 (0.30%) PCI DSS
15 16 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 14 (0.24%) ISO 20022
17 13 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.20%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 437 (7.37%) Active Directory
2 380 (6.41%) Docker
3 172 (2.90%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (1.13%) Hyper-V
4 67 (1.13%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (0.98%) vSphere
6 53 (0.89%) VMware NSX
7 41 (0.69%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.49%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.40%) vCloud
10 23 (0.39%) IAG
11 16 (0.27%) Firmware
12 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 6 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.10%) NFS
13 6 (0.10%) XenApp
13 6 (0.10%) XenDesktop
14 5 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 427 (7.20%) Kubernetes
2 176 (2.97%) Ansible
3 136 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 98 (1.65%) Grafana
5 95 (1.60%) SCCM
6 77 (1.30%) Prometheus
7 45 (0.76%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.71%) SCOM
9 31 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.34%) Control-M
12 16 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 16 (0.27%) WSUS
13 15 (0.25%) NetBackup
14 13 (0.22%) Nessus
15 12 (0.20%) Kibana
15 12 (0.20%) VxRail
16 11 (0.19%) Istio
17 10 (0.17%) Functional Safety
17 10 (0.17%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,426 (24.04%) Microsoft
2 407 (6.86%) Oracle
3 366 (6.17%) SAP
4 344 (5.80%) ServiceNow
5 218 (3.67%) VMware
6 182 (3.07%) Google
7 148 (2.49%) Cisco
8 144 (2.43%) Databricks
9 141 (2.38%) Salesforce
10 123 (2.07%) Splunk
11 76 (1.28%) Workday
12 67 (1.13%) IBM
13 66 (1.11%) Dynatrace
14 64 (1.08%) Adobe
15 61 (1.03%) Apple
16 52 (0.88%) CyberArk
16 52 (0.88%) Red Hat
17 49 (0.83%) Palo Alto
18 48 (0.81%) MuleSoft
19 39 (0.66%) Citrix