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

6 months to
29 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,323 4,917 4,765
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.31% 16.85% 11.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.37% 18.56% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,214 3,069 2,927
10th Percentile £266 £250 £228
25th Percentile £385 £399 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £721 £700 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £471 £475
% change year-on-year -2.39% -0.79% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 337 241 410
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.42 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.96 £16.25 £13.86
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.88 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.10% +30.71% -60.10%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.25 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.50 £61.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £21.46 £15.00
% change year-on-year -14.96% +43.07% -59.82%

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 39,818 26,498 37,391
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.82% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,090 17,105 24,099
10th Percentile £319 £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 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £485 £500
% change year-on-year +0.52% -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,400 1,069 2,428
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.82 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.91 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.66 £29.07 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +39.87% -16.94% -6.17%
75th Percentile £65.88 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.25 £28.00 £36.02
% change year-on-year +50.89% -22.27% +0.06%

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 29 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 29 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 29 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 4,565 £488 -2.50% 2,509
UK excluding London -5 2,805 £460 -2.39% 2,180
London -11 1,959 £513 -2.38% 690
Work from Home 0 1,510 £475 -5.00% 928
North of England -6 771 £447 -6.88% 532
South East -5 662 £488 -2.50% 661
Midlands -5 510 £450 +1.12% 402
North West -5 365 £402 -17.28% 305
Yorkshire -5 359 £460 -3.16% 157
West Midlands -6 345 £475 +5.56% 242
South West 0 323 £500 - 232
Scotland -2 257 £425 -5.56% 97
East of England -4 210 £450 - 216
East Midlands 0 164 £443 +19.84% 160
Wales -2 68 £395 +19.27% 46
North East -4 54 £425 -16.67% 79
Northern Ireland -2 26 £439 +25.29% 57
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
1 215 (4.04%) Confluence
2 142 (2.67%) SharePoint
3 93 (1.75%) Microsoft Exchange
4 89 (1.67%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.22%) Apache
6 49 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 47 (0.88%) SAS
8 30 (0.56%) CMS
9 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.24%) nginx
11 12 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
15 4 (0.075%) WordPress
Applications
1 303 (5.69%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (4.28%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.12%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.50%) Microsoft Project
5 74 (1.39%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 11 (0.21%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
13 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
13 5 (0.094%) Maya
13 5 (0.094%) Revit
14 4 (0.075%) InDesign
14 4 (0.075%) InVision
14 4 (0.075%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 112 (2.10%) SAP S/4HANA
2 32 (0.60%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.38%) Payment Gateway
5 19 (0.36%) Aladdin
6 17 (0.32%) Oracle ERP
7 16 (0.30%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) SAP ERP
11 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
11 11 (0.21%) Teamcenter
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
14 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,086 (20.40%) Azure
2 821 (15.42%) AWS
3 394 (7.40%) Power Platform
4 357 (6.71%) GCP
5 348 (6.54%) Microsoft 365
6 245 (4.60%) Azure DevOps
7 224 (4.21%) GitHub
8 166 (3.12%) Entra ID
9 157 (2.95%) Serverless
10 124 (2.33%) SaaS
11 112 (2.10%) GitHub Actions
12 99 (1.86%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.73%) AWS Lambda
14 75 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
14 75 (1.41%) OpenShift
15 74 (1.39%) Snowflake
16 73 (1.37%) Power Automate
17 72 (1.35%) Azure Data Factory
18 59 (1.11%) PowerApps
19 55 (1.03%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 185 (3.48%) DNS
1 185 (3.48%) Firewall
2 120 (2.25%) TCP/IP
3 110 (2.07%) VPN
4 108 (2.03%) Network Security
5 104 (1.95%) WAN
6 98 (1.84%) DHCP
7 79 (1.48%) LAN
8 77 (1.45%) SAN
9 63 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
10 51 (0.96%) BGP
11 47 (0.88%) VLAN
12 44 (0.83%) OSPF
13 38 (0.71%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.68%) VoIP
15 26 (0.49%) MPLS
15 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
15 26 (0.49%) Wireless
16 25 (0.47%) Internet
17 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (5.84%) Power BI
2 200 (3.76%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.04%) Data Warehouse
4 138 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
5 133 (2.50%) Relational Database
6 117 (2.20%) Metadata
7 91 (1.71%) Tableau
8 89 (1.67%) MongoDB
9 84 (1.58%) Big Data
9 84 (1.58%) NoSQL
10 80 (1.50%) Data Lake
11 64 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
12 60 (1.13%) MySQL
13 55 (1.03%) Oracle Database
14 49 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 44 (0.83%) Hadoop
16 34 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
17 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
18 30 (0.56%) BigQuery
19 29 (0.54%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 505 (9.49%) JIRA
2 310 (5.82%) Git
3 204 (3.83%) Jenkins
4 142 (2.67%) GitLab
5 69 (1.30%) Selenium
6 41 (0.77%) Postman
7 33 (0.62%) Cucumber
8 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
8 29 (0.54%) JUnit
9 26 (0.49%) REST Assured
10 22 (0.41%) Cypress.io
10 22 (0.41%) JMeter
11 21 (0.39%) Maven
12 19 (0.36%) Mockito
13 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
13 18 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
16 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
17 12 (0.23%) Artifactory
General
1 2,782 (52.26%) Social Skills
2 2,048 (38.47%) Analytical Skills
3 1,242 (23.33%) Finance
4 513 (9.64%) Public Sector
5 411 (7.72%) Banking
6 226 (4.25%) Organisational Skills
7 185 (3.48%) Retail
8 182 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
9 162 (3.04%) Legal
10 138 (2.59%) Influencing Skills
11 129 (2.42%) Presentation Skills
12 118 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 97 (1.82%) Front Office
14 96 (1.80%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.65%) Manufacturing
16 87 (1.63%) Marketing
17 75 (1.41%) Investment Banking
18 59 (1.11%) Financial Institution
19 57 (1.07%) Back Office
20 55 (1.03%) Law
Job Titles
1 741 (13.92%) Analyst
2 666 (12.51%) Developer
3 460 (8.64%) Senior
4 375 (7.04%) Architect
5 335 (6.29%) Lead
6 302 (5.67%) Business Analyst
7 268 (5.03%) Consultant
8 231 (4.34%) Data Engineer
9 204 (3.83%) Project Manager
10 132 (2.48%) Support Engineer
11 128 (2.40%) IT Support
12 123 (2.31%) Java Developer
13 119 (2.24%) Data Analyst
14 106 (1.99%) Administrator
15 102 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
16 95 (1.78%) IT Engineer
17 93 (1.75%) Software Engineer
18 90 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 88 (1.65%) Network Engineer
20 81 (1.52%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 309 (5.80%) REST
2 161 (3.02%) Kafka
3 148 (2.78%) RESTful
4 147 (2.76%) SOAP
5 143 (2.69%) .NET
6 141 (2.65%) Spring
7 133 (2.50%) React
8 125 (2.35%) Node.js
9 116 (2.18%) CSS
10 109 (2.05%) HTML
11 107 (2.01%) AngularJS
12 106 (1.99%) Spring Boot
13 101 (1.90%) JSON
14 95 (1.78%) LDAP
15 92 (1.73%) XML
16 91 (1.71%) Middleware
17 74 (1.39%) OAuth
18 73 (1.37%) PySpark
19 55 (1.03%) Oracle Fusion
20 53 (1.00%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 277 (5.20%) Product Ownership
2 225 (4.23%) Onboarding
3 217 (4.08%) Cloud Native
4 191 (3.59%) Data Centre
5 157 (2.95%) Management Information System
6 153 (2.87%) Self-Motivation
7 148 (2.78%) Analytical Mindset
8 114 (2.14%) Distributed Systems
9 112 (2.10%) Legacy Systems
10 109 (2.05%) Data Protection Act
10 109 (2.05%) Data Structures
11 108 (2.03%) Virtual Team
12 103 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
13 71 (1.33%) Driving Licence
14 70 (1.32%) Security Posture
15 62 (1.16%) Algorithms
16 61 (1.15%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
18 53 (1.00%) AI Agents
18 53 (1.00%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 590 (11.08%) Windows
2 309 (5.80%) Linux
3 113 (2.12%) Windows 10
4 103 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 99 (1.86%) Unix
6 92 (1.73%) Android
7 81 (1.52%) Apple iOS
8 68 (1.28%) Mac OS
9 55 (1.03%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.38%) Ubuntu
10 20 (0.38%) VMS
11 14 (0.26%) CentOS
12 11 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) zOS
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
15 7 (0.13%) Debian
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
17 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,478 (27.77%) Agile
2 898 (16.87%) CI/CD
3 808 (15.18%) Continuous Improvement
4 805 (15.12%) DevOps
5 778 (14.62%) Stakeholder Management
6 593 (11.14%) Analytics
7 583 (10.95%) Decision-Making
8 579 (10.88%) Migration
9 575 (10.80%) AI
10 464 (8.72%) Project Management
11 455 (8.55%) Data Modelling
12 454 (8.53%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 426 (8.00%) Validation
14 422 (7.93%) Customer Service
15 418 (7.85%) Business Intelligence
16 401 (7.53%) ITIL
17 396 (7.44%) Test Automation
18 380 (7.14%) Scrum
19 376 (7.06%) Change Management
20 347 (6.52%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 976 (18.34%) Python
2 917 (17.23%) SQL
3 451 (8.47%) Java
4 327 (6.14%) PowerShell
5 281 (5.28%) JavaScript
6 200 (3.76%) C#
7 173 (3.25%) TypeScript
8 126 (2.37%) Bash
9 84 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 69 (1.30%) C++
11 62 (1.16%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.98%) Go
13 46 (0.86%) R
14 41 (0.77%) Bicep
15 38 (0.71%) C
16 36 (0.68%) Apex Code
16 36 (0.68%) Perl
17 35 (0.66%) T-SQL
18 34 (0.64%) Scala
19 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,150 (21.60%) Security Cleared
2 802 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 657 (12.34%) Degree
4 225 (4.23%) Computer Science Degree
5 190 (3.57%) DV Cleared
6 175 (3.29%) BPSS Clearance
7 127 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
8 120 (2.25%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.88%) CISSP
10 91 (1.71%) PMP
11 87 (1.63%) PMI Certification
12 83 (1.56%) Master's Degree
13 68 (1.28%) CCNA
14 66 (1.24%) Azure Certification
15 65 (1.22%) A+ Certification
16 64 (1.20%) CISM
17 59 (1.11%) Network+ Certification
18 56 (1.05%) MCSE
19 43 (0.81%) CCNP
20 34 (0.64%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 347 (6.52%) Data Quality
2 325 (6.11%) QA
3 160 (3.01%) GDPR
4 108 (2.03%) Accessibility
5 97 (1.82%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 94 (1.77%) PMO
7 83 (1.56%) NIST
8 75 (1.41%) SLA
9 50 (0.94%) GRC
10 36 (0.68%) WCAG
11 31 (0.58%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.54%) Actionable Recommendations
12 29 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 20 (0.38%) ISO 20022
13 20 (0.38%) PSD2
14 16 (0.30%) IFRS
15 15 (0.28%) HIPAA
16 14 (0.26%) HL7
16 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
16 14 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 383 (7.20%) Active Directory
2 362 (6.80%) Docker
3 114 (2.14%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.90%) vSphere
5 38 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.39%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
9 16 (0.30%) VMware ESXi
10 11 (0.21%) RACF
10 11 (0.21%) Squid
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.19%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
13 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.075%) NFS
14 4 (0.075%) Snort
Systems Management
1 446 (8.38%) Kubernetes
2 300 (5.64%) Terraform
3 188 (3.53%) Ansible
4 127 (2.39%) Microsoft Intune
5 122 (2.29%) Grafana
6 91 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 82 (1.54%) SCCM
8 40 (0.75%) vCenter Server
9 38 (0.71%) FortiGate
10 37 (0.70%) Single Sign-On
11 30 (0.56%) Kibana
12 27 (0.51%) Argo
13 26 (0.49%) Puppet
14 23 (0.43%) Control-M
15 21 (0.39%) Nessus
16 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.28%) WSUS
18 14 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
19 13 (0.24%) vRealize
20 12 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 975 (18.32%) Microsoft
2 359 (6.74%) Oracle
3 293 (5.50%) SAP
4 238 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 194 (3.64%) VMware
6 166 (3.12%) Google
7 156 (2.93%) Databricks
8 130 (2.44%) Cisco
9 122 (2.29%) Splunk
10 119 (2.24%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.52%) Dell
12 72 (1.35%) CyberArk
13 68 (1.28%) BeyondTrust
13 68 (1.28%) Red Hat
14 61 (1.15%) Workday
15 59 (1.11%) Adobe
16 55 (1.03%) Citrix
17 52 (0.98%) IBM
18 49 (0.92%) HP
18 49 (0.92%) Palo Alto