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

6 months to
2 Mar 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,495 4,683 4,778
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.28% 15.51% 10.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.35% 17.23% 12.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,394 2,854 2,982
10th Percentile £291 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £400 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £483 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.50% - -5.66%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £700 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £475 £475
% change year-on-year - - -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 316 183 387
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.29 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.59 £17.31 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £27.00 £19.38
Median % change year-on-year -25.93% +39.35% -38.55%
75th Percentile £41.78 £44.38 £46.29
90th Percentile £70.88 £72.00 £76.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.28 £22.94 £17.50
% change year-on-year -24.69% +31.07% -32.72%

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 35,800 27,183 38,766
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.50% 90.06% 86.86%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,707 16,972 25,287
10th Percentile £313 £305 £300
25th Percentile £412 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £638
90th Percentile £723 £740 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £482 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,144 882 2,256
10th Percentile £14.65 £15.62 £13.25
25th Percentile £18.24 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £27.61 £32.50 £33.03
Median % change year-on-year -15.06% -1.61% -5.62%
75th Percentile £63.75 £64.50 £59.44
90th Percentile £73.46 £75.48 £72.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £32.00 £34.36
% change year-on-year -21.41% -6.85% -1.84%

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 2 March 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 2 March 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 2 March 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 -1 4,698 £492 -1.60% 3,812
UK excluding London -4 2,834 £475 - 3,374
London -3 2,062 £515 -1.90% 958
Work from Home +1 1,608 £481 -3.88% 1,535
North of England -2 768 £450 -7.22% 752
South East -2 659 £488 -2.50% 1,056
Midlands -1 528 £450 +3.45% 550
North West -1 385 £424 -10.66% 392
West Midlands 0 383 £475 +5.56% 302
Yorkshire -4 331 £475 -5.00% 276
South West -2 314 £543 +7.16% 391
Scotland 0 273 £447 -0.67% 159
East of England -3 238 £454 +0.89% 426
East Midlands -2 146 £402 +4.42% 242
Wales +1 66 £400 +3.23% 101
North East -3 60 £450 -6.40% 98
Northern Ireland -3 29 £475 +43.94% 46
Channel Islands 0 1 - - 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
1 224 (4.08%) Confluence
2 163 (2.97%) SharePoint
3 108 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 93 (1.69%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.24%) Apache
6 66 (1.20%) SAS
7 50 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
8 36 (0.66%) CMS
9 22 (0.40%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 15 (0.27%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle Workflow
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.13%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Palantir Foundry
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 317 (5.77%) Microsoft Excel
2 230 (4.19%) Microsoft Office
3 125 (2.27%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 84 (1.53%) MS Visio
5 78 (1.42%) Microsoft Project
6 22 (0.40%) Chatbot
7 18 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.091%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.073%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.073%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.073%) InDesign
12 4 (0.073%) InVision
12 4 (0.073%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.073%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.055%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.055%) Notion
Business Applications
1 96 (1.75%) SAP S/4HANA
2 42 (0.76%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 19 (0.35%) Aladdin
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Workday HCM
7 14 (0.25%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
7 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
8 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.24%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
9 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
9 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
9 12 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle General Ledger
11 10 (0.18%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,193 (21.71%) Azure
2 867 (15.78%) AWS
3 399 (7.26%) GCP
4 378 (6.88%) Power Platform
5 343 (6.24%) Microsoft 365
6 263 (4.79%) GitHub
7 251 (4.57%) Azure DevOps
8 190 (3.46%) Serverless
9 165 (3.00%) Entra ID
10 139 (2.53%) SaaS
11 137 (2.49%) GitHub Actions
12 102 (1.86%) Amazon S3
13 96 (1.75%) AWS Lambda
14 92 (1.67%) Snowflake
15 91 (1.66%) OpenShift
16 82 (1.49%) Azure Data Factory
17 81 (1.47%) Dynamics 365
18 70 (1.27%) PaaS
19 69 (1.26%) Power Automate
20 62 (1.13%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 217 (3.95%) Firewall
2 198 (3.60%) DNS
3 132 (2.40%) TCP/IP
4 115 (2.09%) VPN
5 114 (2.07%) Network Security
6 112 (2.04%) DHCP
7 105 (1.91%) WAN
8 82 (1.49%) LAN
9 58 (1.06%) Wi-Fi
10 53 (0.96%) VLAN
11 51 (0.93%) BGP
12 39 (0.71%) SAN
13 37 (0.67%) OSPF
14 33 (0.60%) VoIP
15 27 (0.49%) Wireless
16 24 (0.44%) SD-WAN
16 24 (0.44%) SSH
17 23 (0.42%) SSL
18 22 (0.40%) Skype
19 21 (0.38%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 308 (5.61%) Power BI
2 182 (3.31%) SQL Server
3 170 (3.09%) PostgreSQL
4 166 (3.02%) Data Warehouse
5 161 (2.93%) Relational Database
6 111 (2.02%) NoSQL
7 110 (2.00%) MongoDB
8 91 (1.66%) Metadata
9 90 (1.64%) MySQL
10 81 (1.47%) Tableau
11 80 (1.46%) Big Data
12 73 (1.33%) Data Lake
13 71 (1.29%) Oracle Database
14 55 (1.00%) Oracle Reports
15 53 (0.96%) Hadoop
16 50 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
17 43 (0.78%) Amazon RDS
18 37 (0.67%) DynamoDB
18 37 (0.67%) Elasticsearch
19 36 (0.66%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 500 (9.10%) JIRA
2 382 (6.95%) Git
3 274 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 177 (3.22%) GitLab
5 85 (1.55%) Selenium
6 63 (1.15%) JUnit
7 46 (0.84%) Postman
8 43 (0.78%) Cucumber
9 38 (0.69%) Bitbucket
10 27 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Maven
12 25 (0.45%) Sonatype Nexus
13 24 (0.44%) Cypress.io
13 24 (0.44%) JMeter
14 23 (0.42%) SonarQube
15 19 (0.35%) Mockito
16 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.27%) CircleCI
17 15 (0.27%) IntelliJ
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,000 (54.60%) Social Skills
2 1,986 (36.14%) Analytical Skills
3 1,218 (22.17%) Finance
4 546 (9.94%) Public Sector
5 437 (7.95%) Banking
6 213 (3.88%) Organisational Skills
7 171 (3.11%) Legal
8 170 (3.09%) Documentation Skills
9 144 (2.62%) Retail
10 142 (2.58%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 142 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
11 135 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
12 102 (1.86%) Front Office
12 102 (1.86%) Telecoms
13 94 (1.71%) Marketing
14 91 (1.66%) Investment Banking
15 79 (1.44%) Manufacturing
16 64 (1.16%) Military
17 57 (1.04%) Financial Institution
18 45 (0.82%) Law
Job Titles
1 785 (14.29%) Developer
2 770 (14.01%) Analyst
3 484 (8.81%) Senior
4 367 (6.68%) Architect
5 346 (6.30%) Lead
6 316 (5.75%) Business Analyst
7 309 (5.62%) Consultant
8 215 (3.91%) Data Engineer
9 202 (3.68%) Project Manager
10 147 (2.68%) Support Engineer
11 136 (2.47%) Java Developer
12 131 (2.38%) IT Support
13 114 (2.07%) Data Analyst
14 111 (2.02%) Senior Developer
15 103 (1.87%) Software Engineer
16 95 (1.73%) Solutions Architect
17 92 (1.67%) Python Developer
18 88 (1.60%) Administrator
19 85 (1.55%) Network Engineer
19 85 (1.55%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 375 (6.82%) REST
2 188 (3.42%) RESTful
3 187 (3.40%) Kafka
4 186 (3.38%) SOAP
5 176 (3.20%) .NET
6 165 (3.00%) React
7 164 (2.98%) Node.js
7 164 (2.98%) Spring
8 136 (2.47%) HTML
9 130 (2.37%) CSS
10 125 (2.27%) AngularJS
11 119 (2.17%) JSON
12 114 (2.07%) Spring Boot
13 104 (1.89%) XML
14 93 (1.69%) LDAP
14 93 (1.69%) Middleware
15 77 (1.40%) OAuth
16 71 (1.29%) Oracle Fusion
17 66 (1.20%) PySpark
17 66 (1.20%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 271 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 238 (4.33%) Cloud Native
3 198 (3.60%) Onboarding
4 176 (3.20%) Management Information System
5 144 (2.62%) Data Centre
6 135 (2.46%) Analytical Mindset
7 128 (2.33%) Data Structures
8 124 (2.26%) Self-Motivation
9 113 (2.06%) Data Protection Act
10 102 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
11 98 (1.78%) Algorithms
11 98 (1.78%) Virtual Team
12 90 (1.64%) Legacy Systems
13 83 (1.51%) Distributed Systems
14 82 (1.49%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.33%) CMDB
16 72 (1.31%) Hybrid Cloud
17 66 (1.20%) Mobile App
18 63 (1.15%) Driving Licence
19 56 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 570 (10.37%) Windows
2 357 (6.50%) Linux
3 117 (2.13%) Unix
4 107 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 99 (1.80%) Windows 10
6 70 (1.27%) Android
7 67 (1.22%) Apple iOS
7 67 (1.22%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
8 56 (1.02%) Mac OS
9 21 (0.38%) VMS
10 16 (0.29%) CentOS
11 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
12 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.091%) Windows Server 2003
16 5 (0.091%) zOS
17 4 (0.073%) Debian
17 4 (0.073%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,603 (29.17%) Agile
2 1,032 (18.78%) CI/CD
3 885 (16.11%) DevOps
4 812 (14.78%) Stakeholder Management
5 788 (14.34%) Continuous Improvement
6 617 (11.23%) Analytics
7 571 (10.39%) Migration
8 552 (10.05%) Decision-Making
9 493 (8.97%) AI
10 467 (8.50%) Project Management
11 466 (8.48%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 457 (8.32%) Data Modelling
13 448 (8.15%) Test Automation
14 423 (7.70%) Scrum
15 416 (7.57%) Business Intelligence
16 409 (7.44%) Validation
17 384 (6.99%) Containerisation
18 382 (6.95%) ITIL
19 380 (6.92%) Customer Service
20 375 (6.82%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,065 (19.38%) Python
2 944 (17.18%) SQL
3 513 (9.34%) Java
4 365 (6.64%) PowerShell
5 329 (5.99%) JavaScript
6 231 (4.20%) C#
7 217 (3.95%) TypeScript
8 152 (2.77%) Bash
9 82 (1.49%) Shell Script
10 74 (1.35%) PL/SQL
11 62 (1.13%) C++
11 62 (1.13%) Go
12 49 (0.89%) Perl
13 42 (0.76%) Scala
14 40 (0.73%) T-SQL
15 38 (0.69%) Bicep
15 38 (0.69%) Ruby
16 36 (0.66%) VBA
17 34 (0.62%) R
18 32 (0.58%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,165 (21.20%) Security Cleared
2 828 (15.07%) SC Cleared
3 731 (13.30%) Degree
4 251 (4.57%) Computer Science Degree
5 203 (3.69%) DV Cleared
6 155 (2.82%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (1.98%) Master's Degree
8 102 (1.86%) Cisco Certification
8 102 (1.86%) PMI Certification
9 100 (1.82%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.82%) PMP
10 95 (1.73%) CISSP
11 76 (1.38%) Azure Certification
12 60 (1.09%) CISM
13 56 (1.02%) AWS Certification
13 56 (1.02%) CCNP
14 43 (0.78%) CCNA
15 38 (0.69%) A+ Certification
16 36 (0.66%) ITIL Certification
17 29 (0.53%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 358 (6.52%) QA
2 328 (5.97%) Data Quality
3 159 (2.89%) GDPR
4 121 (2.20%) Accessibility
5 88 (1.60%) PMO
6 86 (1.57%) NIST
7 85 (1.55%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 62 (1.13%) SLA
9 37 (0.67%) PCI DSS
10 33 (0.60%) GRC
10 33 (0.60%) WCAG
11 26 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.42%) PSD2
13 22 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 18 (0.33%) ISO 20022
15 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
16 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
17 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.27%) IFRS
18 14 (0.25%) California Consumer Privacy Act
System Software
1 487 (8.86%) Docker
2 383 (6.97%) Active Directory
3 115 (2.09%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.76%) vSphere
5 36 (0.66%) Hyper-V
6 34 (0.62%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 21 (0.38%) Firmware
8 21 (0.38%) Virtual Machines
9 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 9 (0.16%) ACF2
12 8 (0.15%) Squid
12 8 (0.15%) VMware ESXi
13 7 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) HDFS
14 6 (0.11%) vCloud
15 4 (0.073%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) BitLocker
16 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 534 (9.72%) Kubernetes
2 315 (5.73%) Terraform
3 203 (3.69%) Ansible
4 136 (2.47%) Grafana
5 117 (2.13%) Microsoft Intune
6 109 (1.98%) Prometheus
7 99 (1.80%) SCCM
8 50 (0.91%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.71%) Puppet
10 36 (0.66%) Kibana
11 35 (0.64%) FortiGate
12 32 (0.58%) Nessus
13 31 (0.56%) Argo
14 26 (0.47%) vCenter Server
15 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
16 23 (0.42%) Control-M
17 22 (0.40%) IBM Guardium
18 16 (0.29%) Red Hat Satellite
19 13 (0.24%) vRealize
20 12 (0.22%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,021 (18.58%) Microsoft
2 366 (6.66%) Oracle
3 266 (4.84%) SAP
4 244 (4.44%) ServiceNow
5 205 (3.73%) VMware
6 175 (3.18%) Google
7 162 (2.95%) Databricks
8 159 (2.89%) Splunk
9 134 (2.44%) Cisco
10 113 (2.06%) Salesforce
11 88 (1.60%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.33%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
14 57 (1.04%) IBM
14 57 (1.04%) Palo Alto
14 57 (1.04%) Workday
15 56 (1.02%) Citrix
15 56 (1.02%) Talend
16 52 (0.95%) Dell
17 51 (0.93%) Informatica