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

6 months to
15 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 5,418 4,896 4,752
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.82% 16.71% 10.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.89% 18.43% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,291 3,068 2,931
10th Percentile £280 £250 £213
25th Percentile £390 £399 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £711 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £470 £475
% change year-on-year - -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 238 409
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.42 £11.06
25th Percentile £14.96 £16.80 £13.82
Median hourly rate £21.25 £24.09 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.79% +37.66% -60.10%
75th Percentile £50.32 £41.44 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.88 £64.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £21.68 £15.00
% change year-on-year -16.37% +44.53% -51.61%

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 39,015 26,568 37,622
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.69% 86.39%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,668 17,198 24,355
10th Percentile £316 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £743 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £488 £500
% change year-on-year - -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,323 1,023 2,389
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.92 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.45 £18.51 £15.85
Median hourly rate £37.00 £30.78 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +20.21% -6.91% -8.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.50 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.20 £29.00 £33.00
% change year-on-year +28.28% -12.12% -8.65%

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 15 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 15 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 15 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 4,654 £492 -1.60% 2,754
UK excluding London -5 2,819 £470 - 2,427
London -8 2,026 £510 -2.86% 767
Work from Home 0 1,540 £475 -5.00% 1,061
North of England -5 781 £450 -8.07% 568
South East -5 664 £493 -1.50% 744
Midlands -3 514 £450 - 423
North West -5 386 £425 -13.27% 298
West Midlands -4 368 £475 +1.28% 251
Yorkshire -4 349 £468 -1.47% 185
South West -2 316 £513 +2.50% 274
Scotland +1 250 £425 -5.56% 129
East of England -3 216 £450 - 272
East Midlands -1 147 £419 +13.25% 173
Wales -2 71 £390 +17.76% 69
North East -4 55 £438 -14.22% 97
Northern Ireland 0 27 £430 +26.47% 29
Channel Islands -5 1 - - 3

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
1 230 (4.25%) Confluence
2 154 (2.84%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 89 (1.64%) Apache Spark
5 69 (1.27%) SAS
6 64 (1.18%) Apache
7 48 (0.89%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 19 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.11%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 312 (5.76%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.15%) Microsoft Office
3 120 (2.21%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 80 (1.48%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) CATIA
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.092%) Maya
12 4 (0.074%) AutoCAD
12 4 (0.074%) InDesign
12 4 (0.074%) InVision
12 4 (0.074%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.055%) CPLEX
Business Applications
1 102 (1.88%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 24 (0.44%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.30%) Payment Gateway
6 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
7 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.22%) NetSuite
9 11 (0.20%) iTrent
9 11 (0.20%) Remedy ITSM
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
10 10 (0.18%) SAP SD
10 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
11 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
11 9 (0.17%) Shopify
12 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,122 (20.71%) Azure
2 846 (15.61%) AWS
3 397 (7.33%) Power Platform
4 367 (6.77%) GCP
5 349 (6.44%) Microsoft 365
6 251 (4.63%) Azure DevOps
7 234 (4.32%) GitHub
8 173 (3.19%) Serverless
9 170 (3.14%) Entra ID
10 139 (2.57%) SaaS
11 124 (2.29%) GitHub Actions
12 110 (2.03%) Amazon S3
13 103 (1.90%) AWS Lambda
14 92 (1.70%) OpenShift
15 77 (1.42%) Snowflake
16 76 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
17 74 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.37%) Power Automate
18 62 (1.14%) PowerApps
19 59 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 202 (3.73%) Firewall
2 194 (3.58%) DNS
3 123 (2.27%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.16%) Network Security
5 111 (2.05%) VPN
6 108 (1.99%) WAN
7 103 (1.90%) DHCP
8 86 (1.59%) LAN
9 69 (1.27%) SAN
10 66 (1.22%) Wi-Fi
11 54 (1.00%) BGP
12 50 (0.92%) VLAN
13 40 (0.74%) OSPF
14 37 (0.68%) SD-WAN
14 37 (0.68%) VoIP
15 28 (0.52%) Internet
15 28 (0.52%) MPLS
15 28 (0.52%) Wireless
16 23 (0.42%) VXLAN
17 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 316 (5.83%) Power BI
2 196 (3.62%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.03%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (2.73%) PostgreSQL
4 148 (2.73%) Relational Database
5 115 (2.12%) Metadata
6 99 (1.83%) NoSQL
7 93 (1.72%) MongoDB
8 88 (1.62%) Big Data
8 88 (1.62%) Tableau
9 83 (1.53%) Data Lake
10 68 (1.26%) MySQL
10 68 (1.26%) Oracle Database
11 65 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 47 (0.87%) Hadoop
12 47 (0.87%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 39 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
14 38 (0.70%) Pentaho
15 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
16 30 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 520 (9.60%) JIRA
2 347 (6.40%) Git
3 250 (4.61%) Jenkins
4 163 (3.01%) GitLab
5 85 (1.57%) Selenium
6 50 (0.92%) JUnit
7 43 (0.79%) Postman
8 32 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.52%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.42%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.42%) Maven
11 23 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
12 21 (0.39%) JMeter
12 21 (0.39%) Mockito
13 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
15 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.26%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,862 (52.82%) Social Skills
2 2,044 (37.73%) Analytical Skills
3 1,247 (23.02%) Finance
4 535 (9.87%) Public Sector
5 422 (7.79%) Banking
6 221 (4.08%) Organisational Skills
7 183 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
8 179 (3.30%) Retail
9 174 (3.21%) Legal
10 141 (2.60%) Influencing Skills
11 131 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
12 123 (2.27%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 98 (1.81%) Front Office
14 96 (1.77%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.62%) Marketing
16 83 (1.53%) Manufacturing
17 76 (1.40%) Investment Banking
18 56 (1.03%) Financial Institution
19 54 (1.00%) Military
20 52 (0.96%) Back Office
Job Titles
1 742 (13.70%) Analyst
2 698 (12.88%) Developer
3 477 (8.80%) Senior
4 382 (7.05%) Architect
5 346 (6.39%) Lead
6 311 (5.74%) Business Analyst
7 285 (5.26%) Consultant
8 234 (4.32%) Data Engineer
9 214 (3.95%) Project Manager
10 135 (2.49%) Support Engineer
11 134 (2.47%) Java Developer
12 127 (2.34%) IT Support
13 110 (2.03%) Data Analyst
14 107 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
15 102 (1.88%) Administrator
16 100 (1.85%) Software Engineer
17 90 (1.66%) Senior Developer
18 89 (1.64%) IT Engineer
18 89 (1.64%) Network Engineer
19 84 (1.55%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 348 (6.42%) REST
2 173 (3.19%) Kafka
3 158 (2.92%) RESTful
4 155 (2.86%) SOAP
5 147 (2.71%) Spring
6 146 (2.69%) .NET
7 135 (2.49%) React
8 132 (2.44%) Node.js
9 111 (2.05%) AngularJS
9 111 (2.05%) CSS
9 111 (2.05%) Spring Boot
10 109 (2.01%) HTML
11 104 (1.92%) JSON
12 97 (1.79%) XML
13 92 (1.70%) LDAP
14 90 (1.66%) Middleware
15 79 (1.46%) OAuth
16 71 (1.31%) PySpark
17 62 (1.14%) Oracle Fusion
18 61 (1.13%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 277 (5.11%) Product Ownership
2 223 (4.12%) Cloud Native
3 215 (3.97%) Onboarding
4 173 (3.19%) Data Centre
5 156 (2.88%) Management Information System
6 150 (2.77%) Self-Motivation
7 143 (2.64%) Analytical Mindset
8 112 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
8 112 (2.07%) Data Structures
9 109 (2.01%) Distributed Systems
10 107 (1.97%) Virtual Team
11 105 (1.94%) Enterprise Software
12 104 (1.92%) Legacy Systems
13 73 (1.35%) Algorithms
14 70 (1.29%) Driving Licence
14 70 (1.29%) Security Posture
15 64 (1.18%) Mobile App
16 60 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
17 56 (1.03%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
18 52 (0.96%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 602 (11.11%) Windows
2 335 (6.18%) Linux
3 117 (2.16%) Windows Server
4 113 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 99 (1.83%) Unix
6 84 (1.55%) Android
7 76 (1.40%) Apple iOS
8 68 (1.26%) Mac OS
9 62 (1.14%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.37%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.15%) zOS
15 6 (0.11%) Debian
16 4 (0.074%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.074%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,533 (28.29%) Agile
2 960 (17.72%) CI/CD
3 860 (15.87%) DevOps
4 810 (14.95%) Continuous Improvement
5 800 (14.77%) Stakeholder Management
6 634 (11.70%) Analytics
7 583 (10.76%) Migration
8 576 (10.63%) Decision-Making
9 552 (10.19%) AI
10 490 (9.04%) Project Management
11 473 (8.73%) Data Modelling
12 469 (8.66%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 434 (8.01%) Business Intelligence
14 432 (7.97%) Test Automation
15 428 (7.90%) Validation
16 419 (7.73%) Customer Service
17 396 (7.31%) Scrum
18 393 (7.25%) ITIL
19 391 (7.22%) Change Management
20 349 (6.44%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,017 (18.77%) Python
2 957 (17.66%) SQL
3 476 (8.79%) Java
4 348 (6.42%) PowerShell
5 290 (5.35%) JavaScript
6 211 (3.89%) C#
7 187 (3.45%) TypeScript
8 151 (2.79%) Bash
9 83 (1.53%) PL/SQL
10 67 (1.24%) C++
10 67 (1.24%) Shell Script
11 56 (1.03%) Go
12 45 (0.83%) Perl
13 43 (0.79%) Bicep
14 40 (0.74%) R
14 40 (0.74%) Scala
15 38 (0.70%) C
16 37 (0.68%) T-SQL
17 33 (0.61%) Apex Code
18 30 (0.55%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,183 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 826 (15.25%) SC Cleared
3 664 (12.26%) Degree
4 224 (4.13%) Computer Science Degree
5 198 (3.65%) DV Cleared
6 179 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 131 (2.42%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 104 (1.92%) PMP
10 99 (1.83%) CISSP
11 98 (1.81%) PMI Certification
12 86 (1.59%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.27%) Azure Certification
14 64 (1.18%) CCNA
15 62 (1.14%) CISM
16 55 (1.02%) CCNP
17 53 (0.98%) A+ Certification
18 49 (0.90%) Network+ Certification
19 48 (0.89%) MCSE
20 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 361 (6.66%) Data Quality
2 340 (6.28%) QA
3 158 (2.92%) GDPR
4 111 (2.05%) Accessibility
5 97 (1.79%) PMO
6 95 (1.75%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 86 (1.59%) NIST
8 73 (1.35%) SLA
9 44 (0.81%) GRC
10 35 (0.65%) WCAG
11 29 (0.54%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.39%) PSD2
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 16 (0.30%) IFRS
17 15 (0.28%) HL7
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
19 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
20 12 (0.22%) NCSC
System Software
1 419 (7.73%) Docker
2 400 (7.38%) Active Directory
3 118 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.89%) vSphere
5 38 (0.70%) VMware NSX
6 32 (0.59%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.39%) Firmware
8 20 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.18%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
13 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 4 (0.074%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.074%) NFS
14 4 (0.074%) Snort
Systems Management
1 489 (9.03%) Kubernetes
2 312 (5.76%) Terraform
3 188 (3.47%) Ansible
4 130 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 126 (2.33%) Grafana
6 98 (1.81%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.53%) SCCM
8 43 (0.79%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.72%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 31 (0.57%) Kibana
12 29 (0.54%) Puppet
13 27 (0.50%) Argo
14 23 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 21 (0.39%) Control-M
15 21 (0.39%) Nessus
16 16 (0.30%) vRealize
17 15 (0.28%) IBM Guardium
18 13 (0.24%) WSUS
19 11 (0.20%) Consul
Vendors
1 976 (18.01%) Microsoft
2 378 (6.98%) Oracle
3 282 (5.20%) SAP
4 235 (4.34%) ServiceNow
5 202 (3.73%) VMware
6 170 (3.14%) Google
7 168 (3.10%) Databricks
8 132 (2.44%) Cisco
9 126 (2.33%) Splunk
10 117 (2.16%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.46%) Red Hat
12 75 (1.38%) Dell
13 69 (1.27%) CyberArk
14 65 (1.20%) BeyondTrust
15 61 (1.13%) Citrix
16 59 (1.09%) Workday
17 57 (1.05%) Talend
18 56 (1.03%) Adobe
19 53 (0.98%) IBM
20 50 (0.92%) Palo Alto