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

6 months to
29 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,790 5,023 4,641
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.60% 15.41% 12.25%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.57% 17.00% 14.27%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,232 3,009 2,668
10th Percentile £256 £230 £261
25th Percentile £381 £375 £390
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £483 £500
Median % change year-on-year +3.63% -3.50% -1.96%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £710 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 577 311 227
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.50 £14.16
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.05
Median hourly rate £18.50 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -8.66% +24.80% -69.42%
75th Percentile £36.46 £34.48 £30.38
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.40 £61.96
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.73 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.90% +15.40% -70.49%

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 46,073 29,551 32,512
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.35% 90.64% 85.83%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,867 18,364 19,652
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £403 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.78%
75th Percentile £630 £625 £638
90th Percentile £731 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,200 1,847 1,359
10th Percentile £13.74 £14.25 £15.00
25th Percentile £17.23 £17.30 £20.06
Median hourly rate £39.75 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +58.05% -40.82% -1.16%
75th Percentile £65.88 £43.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.75 £65.00 £74.45
UK excluding London median hourly rate £40.00 £22.32 £43.00
% change year-on-year +79.25% -48.10% +1.18%

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 September 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 September 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 September 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 -7 4,999 £500 +2.04% 10,232
UK excluding London -3 3,108 £450 - 6,684
London -12 2,139 £525 +3.42% 4,301
Work from Home -4 1,545 £500 - 3,920
South East -3 807 £475 +5.56% 1,572
North of England -11 720 £450 -5.26% 1,540
Midlands -5 612 £450 +2.39% 1,119
West Midlands -8 436 £450 -5.76% 675
North West -11 354 £450 -4.66% 802
South West -4 323 £500 +11.11% 802
Scotland -6 298 £440 -2.22% 513
Yorkshire -6 295 £475 -3.80% 524
East of England 0 286 £450 -10.00% 709
East Midlands +2 172 £450 +20.00% 444
North East -13 73 £375 -16.67% 228
Wales -7 63 £475 +22.58% 180
Northern Ireland -5 25 £419 -11.84% 350
Channel Islands -1 5 £600 - 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
1 249 (4.30%) SharePoint
2 237 (4.09%) Confluence
3 102 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 55 (0.95%) Apache Spark
5 45 (0.78%) Apache Airflow
6 44 (0.76%) Apache
7 30 (0.52%) Oracle Workflow
8 27 (0.47%) CMS
9 26 (0.45%) SAS
10 19 (0.33%) WebLogic
11 16 (0.28%) WebSphere
12 12 (0.21%) Jupyter
13 11 (0.19%) CICS
14 10 (0.17%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 8 (0.14%) IIS
16 7 (0.12%) Adobe Experience Manager
16 7 (0.12%) Appian
16 7 (0.12%) Mule
16 7 (0.12%) WordPress
17 6 (0.10%) Anypoint
Applications
1 341 (5.89%) Microsoft Excel
2 273 (4.72%) Microsoft Office
3 133 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 64 (1.11%) Microsoft Project
5 63 (1.09%) MS Visio
6 28 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 23 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
8 18 (0.31%) AutoCAD
8 18 (0.31%) Chatbot
9 16 (0.28%) Revit
10 15 (0.26%) Sketch
11 11 (0.19%) Trello
12 9 (0.16%) Navisworks
12 9 (0.16%) Windchill
13 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
13 6 (0.10%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
14 5 (0.086%) CATIA
15 4 (0.069%) Adobe XD
16 3 (0.052%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 137 (2.37%) SAP S/4HANA
2 55 (0.95%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.54%) NetSuite
5 30 (0.52%) Workday HCM
6 29 (0.50%) SAP GRC
7 26 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
8 16 (0.28%) Salesforce CRM
9 15 (0.26%) Oracle Payables
10 14 (0.24%) Teamcenter
11 13 (0.22%) iTrent
12 12 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
12 12 (0.21%) Oracle Receivables
12 12 (0.21%) SAP HCM
12 12 (0.21%) SAP SD
13 11 (0.19%) Aladdin
13 11 (0.19%) Finacle
14 10 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
14 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
15 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
Cloud Services
1 1,125 (19.43%) Azure
2 798 (13.78%) AWS
3 525 (9.07%) Microsoft 365
4 461 (7.96%) Power Platform
5 339 (5.85%) GCP
6 281 (4.85%) Azure DevOps
7 244 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 215 (3.71%) GitHub
9 157 (2.71%) SaaS
10 126 (2.18%) Serverless
11 118 (2.04%) Power Automate
12 98 (1.69%) Dynamics 365
12 98 (1.69%) Microsoft Copilot
13 93 (1.61%) GitHub Actions
14 90 (1.55%) PowerApps
15 77 (1.33%) OneDrive
16 74 (1.28%) Snowflake
17 64 (1.11%) Amazon S3
18 61 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
19 60 (1.04%) OpenShift
Communications & Networking
1 216 (3.73%) DNS
2 200 (3.45%) Firewall
3 165 (2.85%) VPN
4 130 (2.25%) DHCP
5 129 (2.23%) TCP/IP
6 124 (2.14%) WAN
7 120 (2.07%) Network Security
8 102 (1.76%) LAN
9 82 (1.42%) Wi-Fi
10 65 (1.12%) SAN
10 65 (1.12%) Wireless
11 51 (0.88%) VLAN
12 49 (0.85%) BGP
13 43 (0.74%) VoIP
14 34 (0.59%) MPLS
15 33 (0.57%) SD-WAN
16 31 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
17 28 (0.48%) HTTP
18 27 (0.47%) Intranet
18 27 (0.47%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 344 (5.94%) Power BI
2 208 (3.59%) SQL Server
3 193 (3.33%) Relational Database
4 167 (2.88%) Data Warehouse
5 157 (2.71%) PostgreSQL
6 107 (1.85%) MongoDB
7 103 (1.78%) Metadata
8 87 (1.50%) NoSQL
9 80 (1.38%) Data Lake
9 80 (1.38%) Tableau
10 67 (1.16%) Oracle Database
11 63 (1.09%) MySQL
12 43 (0.74%) Oracle Reports
13 38 (0.66%) Big Data
14 36 (0.62%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 34 (0.59%) Db2
16 30 (0.52%) BigQuery
16 30 (0.52%) Power Query
17 26 (0.45%) Delta Lake
17 26 (0.45%) DynamoDB
Development Applications
1 490 (8.46%) JIRA
2 386 (6.67%) Git
3 203 (3.51%) Jenkins
4 146 (2.52%) GitLab
5 79 (1.36%) Selenium
6 49 (0.85%) Maven
7 44 (0.76%) Gradle
8 43 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 42 (0.73%) Cypress.io
10 40 (0.69%) Postman
11 39 (0.67%) JUnit
12 32 (0.55%) Bitbucket
13 28 (0.48%) REST Assured
14 27 (0.47%) SonarQube
15 23 (0.40%) JMeter
16 22 (0.38%) Mockito
17 20 (0.35%) Oracle Forms
18 18 (0.31%) Gatling
19 17 (0.29%) WebDriver
20 16 (0.28%) Zephyr
General
1 3,121 (53.90%) Social Skills
2 2,460 (42.49%) Analytical Skills
3 1,310 (22.63%) Finance
4 611 (10.55%) Public Sector
5 452 (7.81%) Banking
6 303 (5.23%) Organisational Skills
7 256 (4.42%) Manufacturing
8 197 (3.40%) Documentation Skills
9 181 (3.13%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 173 (2.99%) Influencing Skills
11 172 (2.97%) Retail
12 151 (2.61%) Legal
13 124 (2.14%) Front Office
14 123 (2.12%) Presentation Skills
15 122 (2.11%) Telecoms
16 117 (2.02%) Marketing
17 93 (1.61%) Investment Banking
18 85 (1.47%) Back Office
19 72 (1.24%) Aerospace
20 68 (1.17%) Law
Job Titles
1 730 (12.61%) Analyst
2 722 (12.47%) Developer
3 546 (9.43%) Senior
4 419 (7.24%) Lead
5 328 (5.66%) Architect
6 266 (4.59%) Consultant
7 252 (4.35%) Business Analyst
8 234 (4.04%) IT Support
9 223 (3.85%) Support Engineer
10 196 (3.39%) Data Engineer
11 169 (2.92%) Administrator
12 160 (2.76%) Project Manager
13 152 (2.63%) IT Engineer
14 133 (2.30%) Java Developer
15 126 (2.18%) Data Analyst
16 119 (2.06%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 115 (1.99%) Network Engineer
18 110 (1.90%) DevOps Engineer
19 109 (1.88%) IT Support Engineer
20 96 (1.66%) Solutions Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 412 (7.12%) REST
2 348 (6.01%) Terraform
3 189 (3.26%) .NET
4 185 (3.20%) RESTful
5 174 (3.01%) SOAP
6 161 (2.78%) React
7 150 (2.59%) Kafka
8 143 (2.47%) Spring
8 143 (2.47%) XML
9 141 (2.44%) HTML
10 138 (2.38%) JSON
11 137 (2.37%) CSS
12 125 (2.16%) Web Services
13 122 (2.11%) Spring Boot
14 119 (2.06%) Middleware
15 98 (1.69%) Node.js
16 90 (1.55%) AngularJS
17 84 (1.45%) OAuth
18 67 (1.16%) PySpark
19 58 (1.00%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 337 (5.82%) Onboarding
2 278 (4.80%) Cloud Native
3 273 (4.72%) Product Ownership
4 220 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 216 (3.73%) Enterprise Software
6 212 (3.66%) Management Information System
7 184 (3.18%) Data Centre
8 156 (2.69%) Distributed Systems
9 142 (2.45%) Data Structures
10 126 (2.18%) Analytical Mindset
10 126 (2.18%) Legacy Systems
11 124 (2.14%) Data Protection Act
12 93 (1.61%) Driving Licence
13 89 (1.54%) Virtual Team
14 81 (1.40%) AI Agents
15 74 (1.28%) CMDB
16 62 (1.07%) Mobile App
17 61 (1.05%) PKI
18 58 (1.00%) NHS
19 55 (0.95%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 783 (13.52%) Windows
2 344 (5.94%) Linux
3 220 (3.80%) Windows Server
4 135 (2.33%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.97%) Unix
6 92 (1.59%) Apple iOS
7 88 (1.52%) Android
7 88 (1.52%) Mac OS
8 58 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 22 (0.38%) Ubuntu
10 19 (0.33%) VMS
11 17 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.26%) Solaris
13 13 (0.22%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) CentOS
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
15 8 (0.14%) AIX
15 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
16 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
17 5 (0.086%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,590 (27.46%) Agile
2 1,399 (24.16%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,286 (22.21%) Continuous Improvement
4 982 (16.96%) CI/CD
5 879 (15.18%) DevOps
6 764 (13.20%) AI
7 649 (11.21%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 633 (10.93%) Decision-Making
9 605 (10.45%) Migration
10 587 (10.14%) Customer Service
11 569 (9.83%) Analytics
12 516 (8.91%) ITIL
13 476 (8.22%) Validation
14 472 (8.15%) Test Automation
15 422 (7.29%) Scrum
16 413 (7.13%) Data Modelling
17 407 (7.03%) Business Intelligence
18 382 (6.60%) ITSM
19 378 (6.53%) Technical Leadership
20 375 (6.48%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,000 (17.27%) SQL
2 874 (15.09%) Python
3 452 (7.81%) Java
4 358 (6.18%) JavaScript
5 335 (5.79%) PowerShell
6 221 (3.82%) C#
7 158 (2.73%) Bash
8 149 (2.57%) TypeScript
9 96 (1.66%) PL/SQL
10 60 (1.04%) C++
11 50 (0.86%) T-SQL
12 48 (0.83%) Shell Script
13 47 (0.81%) Go
14 36 (0.62%) Scala
15 35 (0.60%) Bicep
16 30 (0.52%) Kotlin
17 27 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 26 (0.45%) Apex Code
18 26 (0.45%) Groovy
19 25 (0.43%) R
Qualifications
1 1,281 (22.12%) Security Cleared
2 923 (15.94%) SC Cleared
3 665 (11.49%) Degree
4 227 (3.92%) DV Cleared
5 196 (3.39%) Computer Science Degree
6 192 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
7 152 (2.63%) Microsoft Certification
8 107 (1.85%) Cisco Certification
9 83 (1.43%) Azure Certification
10 82 (1.42%) CISSP
11 77 (1.33%) PMI Certification
12 72 (1.24%) PMP
13 65 (1.12%) A+ Certification
14 57 (0.98%) Master's Degree
15 56 (0.97%) CCNA
16 55 (0.95%) AWS Certification
17 51 (0.88%) DBS Check
18 45 (0.78%) CISM
19 42 (0.73%) ISTQB
19 42 (0.73%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 422 (7.29%) Data Quality
2 390 (6.74%) QA
3 154 (2.66%) Accessibility
4 131 (2.26%) SLA
5 126 (2.18%) GDPR
6 98 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 90 (1.55%) PMO
8 68 (1.17%) GRC
8 68 (1.17%) NIST
9 39 (0.67%) WCAG
10 25 (0.43%) Cyber Essentials
11 23 (0.40%) GxP
12 20 (0.35%) Actionable Recommendations
12 20 (0.35%) NCSC
12 20 (0.35%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 17 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
13 17 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 15 (0.26%) GMP
14 15 (0.26%) ISO 20022
15 12 (0.21%) COBIT
System Software
1 451 (7.79%) Active Directory
2 368 (6.36%) Docker
3 177 (3.06%) VMware Infrastructure
4 71 (1.23%) Hyper-V
4 71 (1.23%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (1.00%) vSphere
6 54 (0.93%) VMware NSX
7 37 (0.64%) Virtual Desktop
8 32 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
9 25 (0.43%) IAG
9 25 (0.43%) vCloud
10 16 (0.28%) Firmware
11 11 (0.19%) Virtual Servers
12 7 (0.12%) NFS
12 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
13 5 (0.086%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 5 (0.086%) RACF
13 5 (0.086%) Time Sharing Option
13 5 (0.086%) XenApp
13 5 (0.086%) XenDesktop
Systems Management
1 408 (7.05%) Kubernetes
2 172 (2.97%) Ansible
3 137 (2.37%) Microsoft Intune
4 97 (1.68%) Grafana
5 93 (1.61%) SCCM
6 77 (1.33%) Prometheus
7 50 (0.86%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.73%) SCOM
9 31 (0.54%) Single Sign-On
10 25 (0.43%) Jamf Pro
11 20 (0.35%) Control-M
12 19 (0.33%) WSUS
13 15 (0.26%) NetBackup
14 14 (0.24%) FortiGate
15 13 (0.22%) Kibana
15 13 (0.22%) Nessus
16 12 (0.21%) VxRail
17 11 (0.19%) Istio
18 10 (0.17%) Puppet
19 9 (0.16%) Argo
Vendors
1 1,383 (23.89%) Microsoft
2 414 (7.15%) Oracle
3 368 (6.36%) SAP
4 358 (6.18%) ServiceNow
5 225 (3.89%) VMware
6 180 (3.11%) Google
7 147 (2.54%) Cisco
8 145 (2.50%) Salesforce
9 132 (2.28%) Databricks
10 118 (2.04%) Splunk
11 81 (1.40%) Workday
12 67 (1.16%) Adobe
13 66 (1.14%) IBM
14 65 (1.12%) Dynatrace
15 61 (1.05%) Apple
16 54 (0.93%) CyberArk
17 51 (0.88%) Red Hat
18 50 (0.86%) MuleSoft
19 44 (0.76%) Dell
19 44 (0.76%) Palo Alto