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

6 months to
23 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 5,348 4,976 4,791
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.52% 16.85% 10.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.58% 18.57% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,237 3,111 2,950
10th Percentile £275 £250 £225
25th Percentile £388 £399 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -0.99% -3.81%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £716 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £463 £469 £475
% change year-on-year -1.23% -1.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 240 410
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.42 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.96 £16.72 £13.83
Median hourly rate £22.00 £23.90 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.95% +36.57% -63.16%
75th Percentile £52.00 £41.31 £36.30
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.63 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.87 £21.46 £15.00
% change year-on-year -12.07% +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 39,369 26,799 37,747
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.81% 90.74% 86.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,829 17,326 24,410
10th Percentile £318 £307 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £521 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.03% -0.76% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,359 1,054 2,423
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.88 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £39.50 £29.90 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +32.11% -14.57% -6.67%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.25 £58.70
90th Percentile £78.25 £75.00 £71.90
UK excluding London median hourly rate £41.56 £28.18 £35.00
% change year-on-year +47.46% -19.49% -6.17%

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 23 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 23 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 23 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 4,589 £492 -1.60% 2,756
UK excluding London -5 2,797 £463 -1.23% 2,473
London -9 1,985 £513 -2.38% 754
Work from Home 0 1,517 £475 -5.00% 1,098
North of England -5 784 £450 -5.26% 546
South East -5 661 £490 -2.05% 728
Midlands -5 496 £450 +1.35% 441
North West -5 376 £424 -13.08% 298
Yorkshire -5 361 £450 -5.26% 169
West Midlands -6 340 £475 +5.56% 249
South West 0 317 £500 - 287
Scotland 0 255 £438 -2.78% 143
East of England -3 208 £450 - 266
East Midlands -1 156 £423 +14.27% 192
Wales -1 70 £395 +19.27% 62
North East -1 57 £425 -16.26% 87
Northern Ireland -1 27 £430 +22.86% 73
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
1 218 (4.08%) Confluence
2 148 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 102 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 91 (1.70%) Apache Spark
5 66 (1.23%) Apache
6 48 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
6 48 (0.90%) SAS
7 31 (0.58%) CMS
8 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
9 15 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.24%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.13%) Camunda
12 7 (0.13%) CICS
12 7 (0.13%) JBoss
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
13 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
13 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 306 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (4.23%) Microsoft Office
3 113 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.48%) Microsoft Project
5 73 (1.36%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 22 (0.41%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.19%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) CATIA
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
12 5 (0.093%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.093%) Maya
13 4 (0.075%) InDesign
13 4 (0.075%) InVision
13 4 (0.075%) Zeplin
14 3 (0.056%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 108 (2.02%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.67%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 19 (0.36%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.32%) Payment Gateway
6 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) SAP ERP
10 11 (0.21%) iTrent
10 11 (0.21%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.17%) Remedy ITSM
12 9 (0.17%) Shopify
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,102 (20.61%) Azure
2 829 (15.50%) AWS
3 398 (7.44%) Power Platform
4 356 (6.66%) GCP
5 354 (6.62%) Microsoft 365
6 247 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
7 227 (4.24%) GitHub
8 176 (3.29%) Entra ID
9 166 (3.10%) Serverless
10 129 (2.41%) SaaS
11 117 (2.19%) GitHub Actions
12 105 (1.96%) Amazon S3
13 96 (1.80%) AWS Lambda
14 78 (1.46%) OpenShift
15 77 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
16 76 (1.42%) Snowflake
17 74 (1.38%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.38%) Power Automate
18 62 (1.16%) PowerApps
19 56 (1.05%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 194 (3.63%) Firewall
2 187 (3.50%) DNS
3 122 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 112 (2.09%) Network Security
5 111 (2.08%) VPN
6 102 (1.91%) WAN
7 101 (1.89%) DHCP
8 78 (1.46%) LAN
9 72 (1.35%) SAN
10 64 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
11 56 (1.05%) BGP
12 52 (0.97%) VLAN
13 43 (0.80%) OSPF
14 37 (0.69%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.67%) VoIP
16 26 (0.49%) Internet
16 26 (0.49%) MPLS
16 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
16 26 (0.49%) Wireless
17 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 317 (5.93%) Power BI
2 199 (3.72%) SQL Server
3 161 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (2.62%) PostgreSQL
5 130 (2.43%) Relational Database
6 115 (2.15%) Metadata
7 97 (1.81%) MongoDB
8 94 (1.76%) Tableau
9 92 (1.72%) NoSQL
10 88 (1.65%) Big Data
11 81 (1.51%) Data Lake
12 64 (1.20%) MySQL
13 63 (1.18%) Oracle Reports
14 55 (1.03%) Oracle Database
15 47 (0.88%) Hadoop
16 46 (0.86%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 35 (0.65%) Amazon RDS
18 33 (0.62%) DynamoDB
19 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
20 31 (0.58%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 509 (9.52%) JIRA
2 309 (5.78%) Git
3 214 (4.00%) Jenkins
4 144 (2.69%) GitLab
5 72 (1.35%) Selenium
6 41 (0.77%) Postman
7 33 (0.62%) JUnit
8 32 (0.60%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 25 (0.47%) REST Assured
11 22 (0.41%) Cypress.io
11 22 (0.41%) JMeter
12 21 (0.39%) Maven
13 19 (0.36%) Mockito
13 19 (0.36%) Sonatype Nexus
14 17 (0.32%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.26%) SpecFlow
15 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
General
1 2,806 (52.47%) Social Skills
2 2,058 (38.48%) Analytical Skills
3 1,243 (23.24%) Finance
4 523 (9.78%) Public Sector
5 419 (7.83%) Banking
6 221 (4.13%) Organisational Skills
7 182 (3.40%) Retail
8 180 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
9 169 (3.16%) Legal
10 141 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
11 131 (2.45%) Presentation Skills
12 122 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 100 (1.87%) Front Office
14 95 (1.78%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.63%) Manufacturing
16 86 (1.61%) Marketing
17 78 (1.46%) Investment Banking
18 58 (1.08%) Financial Institution
19 57 (1.07%) Back Office
20 53 (0.99%) Law
Job Titles
1 738 (13.80%) Analyst
2 666 (12.45%) Developer
3 466 (8.71%) Senior
4 380 (7.11%) Architect
5 336 (6.28%) Lead
6 305 (5.70%) Business Analyst
7 274 (5.12%) Consultant
8 231 (4.32%) Data Engineer
9 206 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 132 (2.47%) Support Engineer
11 127 (2.37%) IT Support
12 126 (2.36%) Java Developer
13 117 (2.19%) Data Analyst
14 105 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
15 104 (1.94%) Administrator
16 95 (1.78%) Software Engineer
17 92 (1.72%) IT Engineer
18 88 (1.65%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 86 (1.61%) Network Engineer
20 83 (1.55%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 316 (5.91%) REST
2 164 (3.07%) Kafka
3 155 (2.90%) RESTful
4 151 (2.82%) SOAP
5 147 (2.75%) .NET
6 142 (2.66%) Spring
7 134 (2.51%) React
8 124 (2.32%) Node.js
9 112 (2.09%) CSS
10 110 (2.06%) HTML
11 108 (2.02%) AngularJS
12 107 (2.00%) JSON
13 106 (1.98%) Spring Boot
14 95 (1.78%) LDAP
14 95 (1.78%) XML
15 88 (1.65%) Middleware
16 80 (1.50%) OAuth
17 72 (1.35%) PySpark
18 59 (1.10%) Oracle Fusion
19 54 (1.01%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 285 (5.33%) Product Ownership
2 220 (4.11%) Onboarding
3 219 (4.09%) Cloud Native
4 183 (3.42%) Data Centre
5 159 (2.97%) Management Information System
6 153 (2.86%) Self-Motivation
7 145 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
8 114 (2.13%) Distributed Systems
9 112 (2.09%) Data Protection Act
9 112 (2.09%) Data Structures
10 106 (1.98%) Legacy Systems
10 106 (1.98%) Virtual Team
11 102 (1.91%) Enterprise Software
12 70 (1.31%) Security Posture
13 69 (1.29%) Driving Licence
14 66 (1.23%) Algorithms
15 60 (1.12%) Hybrid Cloud
15 60 (1.12%) Mobile App
16 54 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 52 (0.97%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 598 (11.18%) Windows
2 322 (6.02%) Linux
3 114 (2.13%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 98 (1.83%) Unix
6 89 (1.66%) Android
7 79 (1.48%) Apple iOS
8 69 (1.29%) Mac OS
9 65 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.36%) VMS
11 17 (0.32%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 11 (0.21%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) zOS
15 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
16 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2012
17 6 (0.11%) Debian
18 4 (0.075%) Oracle Linux
18 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,496 (27.97%) Agile
2 914 (17.09%) CI/CD
3 822 (15.37%) DevOps
4 810 (15.15%) Continuous Improvement
5 786 (14.70%) Stakeholder Management
6 611 (11.42%) Analytics
7 581 (10.86%) Decision-Making
8 577 (10.79%) Migration
9 572 (10.70%) AI
10 477 (8.92%) Project Management
11 462 (8.64%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 459 (8.58%) Data Modelling
13 424 (7.93%) Validation
14 422 (7.89%) Business Intelligence
15 419 (7.83%) Customer Service
16 399 (7.46%) Test Automation
17 397 (7.42%) ITIL
18 381 (7.12%) Change Management
18 381 (7.12%) Scrum
19 348 (6.51%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 995 (18.61%) Python
2 930 (17.39%) SQL
3 460 (8.60%) Java
4 346 (6.47%) PowerShell
5 284 (5.31%) JavaScript
6 205 (3.83%) C#
7 179 (3.35%) TypeScript
8 142 (2.66%) Bash
9 83 (1.55%) PL/SQL
10 66 (1.23%) C++
11 65 (1.22%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.97%) Go
13 46 (0.86%) R
14 44 (0.82%) Perl
15 42 (0.79%) Bicep
16 38 (0.71%) C
16 38 (0.71%) Scala
17 35 (0.65%) Apex Code
18 34 (0.64%) T-SQL
19 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,160 (21.69%) Security Cleared
2 814 (15.22%) SC Cleared
3 655 (12.25%) Degree
4 222 (4.15%) Computer Science Degree
5 192 (3.59%) DV Cleared
6 178 (3.33%) BPSS Clearance
7 128 (2.39%) Cisco Certification
8 115 (2.15%) Microsoft Certification
9 101 (1.89%) CISSP
10 95 (1.78%) PMP
11 91 (1.70%) PMI Certification
12 84 (1.57%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.29%) Azure Certification
13 69 (1.29%) CCNA
14 64 (1.20%) CISM
15 58 (1.08%) A+ Certification
16 53 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
17 51 (0.95%) CCNP
17 51 (0.95%) MCSE
18 37 (0.69%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 348 (6.51%) Data Quality
2 331 (6.19%) QA
3 161 (3.01%) GDPR
4 105 (1.96%) Accessibility
5 97 (1.81%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 94 (1.76%) PMO
7 85 (1.59%) NIST
8 74 (1.38%) SLA
9 48 (0.90%) GRC
10 36 (0.67%) WCAG
11 30 (0.56%) Actionable Recommendations
12 29 (0.54%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 28 (0.52%) PCI DSS
14 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
14 20 (0.37%) PSD2
15 16 (0.30%) IFRS
16 15 (0.28%) HIPAA
16 15 (0.28%) HL7
17 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.26%) NCSC
System Software
1 397 (7.42%) Active Directory
2 379 (7.09%) Docker
3 120 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.84%) vSphere
5 39 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.37%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 12 (0.22%) VMware ESXi
11 11 (0.21%) RACF
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle RAC
12 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 10 (0.19%) vCloud
13 9 (0.17%) ACF2
14 6 (0.11%) IAG
15 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.075%) NFS
15 4 (0.075%) Snort
Systems Management
1 454 (8.49%) Kubernetes
2 309 (5.78%) Terraform
3 186 (3.48%) Ansible
4 129 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
5 123 (2.30%) Grafana
6 94 (1.76%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.55%) SCCM
8 40 (0.75%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.69%) FortiGate
9 37 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
10 30 (0.56%) Kibana
11 29 (0.54%) Puppet
12 28 (0.52%) Argo
13 23 (0.43%) Control-M
14 21 (0.39%) Nessus
15 19 (0.36%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.28%) WSUS
18 13 (0.24%) vRealize
19 11 (0.21%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 988 (18.47%) Microsoft
2 361 (6.75%) Oracle
3 288 (5.39%) SAP
4 237 (4.43%) ServiceNow
5 201 (3.76%) VMware
6 164 (3.07%) Google
7 162 (3.03%) Databricks
8 134 (2.51%) Cisco
9 125 (2.34%) Splunk
10 114 (2.13%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.51%) Red Hat
12 76 (1.42%) Dell
13 71 (1.33%) CyberArk
14 66 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
15 63 (1.18%) Citrix
15 63 (1.18%) Workday
16 58 (1.08%) Adobe
17 49 (0.92%) IBM
18 48 (0.90%) F5
18 48 (0.90%) Informatica