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

6 months to
3 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,435 4,799 4,811
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 12.11% 16.50% 10.90%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 14.16% 18.24% 12.61%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,306 3,027 2,973
10th Percentile £282 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £396 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £470 £475
% change year-on-year - -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 325 222 413
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.84 £11.07
25th Percentile £15.18 £16.95 £14.00
Median hourly rate £20.79 £24.88 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -16.44% +42.17% -56.79%
75th Percentile £45.46 £41.50 £41.25
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.69 £65.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.35 £22.14 £15.69
% change year-on-year -21.64% +41.11% -47.70%

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 38,381 26,317 38,146
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.55% 90.50% 86.40%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,335 17,078 24,751
10th Percentile £313 £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 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.51% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,256 968 2,345
10th Percentile £15.00 £15.00 £12.77
25th Percentile £18.87 £20.12 £15.89
Median hourly rate £35.77 £31.76 £32.50
Median % change year-on-year +12.61% -2.28% -10.41%
75th Percentile £65.00 £63.75 £57.50
90th Percentile £77.50 £76.25 £70.39
UK excluding London median hourly rate £35.00 £30.62 £31.50
% change year-on-year +14.32% -2.81% -12.50%

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 3 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 3 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 3 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 -3 4,673 £490 -2.00% 3,248
UK excluding London -5 2,824 £470 - 2,670
London -7 2,038 £512 -2.51% 986
Work from Home -2 1,536 £475 -5.00% 1,286
North of England -5 784 £450 -5.26% 662
South East -5 663 £495 -1.00% 802
Midlands -4 513 £450 +0.90% 478
North West -5 391 £424 -10.66% 365
West Midlands -4 372 £475 +3.26% 278
Yorkshire -4 346 £471 -1.98% 222
South West -2 321 £520 +1.46% 308
Scotland +1 251 £438 -2.78% 127
East of England -3 221 £450 - 288
East Midlands -3 142 £410 +11.72% 199
Wales -3 69 £400 +6.67% 81
North East -3 56 £438 -2.78% 92
Northern Ireland -2 28 £447 +27.71% 19
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
1 225 (4.14%) Confluence
2 158 (2.91%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.91%) Microsoft Exchange
4 87 (1.60%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.20%) SAS
6 62 (1.14%) Apache
7 47 (0.86%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 17 (0.31%) WebLogic
10 16 (0.29%) Oracle Workflow
11 14 (0.26%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.15%) Skype for Business
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
15 6 (0.11%) ArcGIS
15 6 (0.11%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) JBoss
15 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 311 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 220 (4.05%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (2.15%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.49%) MS Visio
6 30 (0.55%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.44%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) Trello
11 7 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
12 6 (0.11%) CATIA
13 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
13 5 (0.092%) Maya
14 4 (0.074%) InDesign
14 4 (0.074%) InVision
14 4 (0.074%) Zeplin
15 3 (0.055%) Adobe Illustrator
15 3 (0.055%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 97 (1.78%) SAP S/4HANA
2 36 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
6 16 (0.29%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
8 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
9 13 (0.24%) NEC Housing
9 13 (0.24%) Oracle Assets
9 13 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
10 12 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 11 (0.20%) Oracle General Ledger
12 10 (0.18%) NetSuite
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
12 10 (0.18%) SAP SD
13 9 (0.17%) SAP HCM
14 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,145 (21.07%) Azure
2 849 (15.62%) AWS
3 390 (7.18%) Power Platform
4 369 (6.79%) GCP
5 340 (6.26%) Microsoft 365
6 252 (4.64%) Azure DevOps
7 243 (4.47%) GitHub
8 182 (3.35%) Serverless
9 169 (3.11%) Entra ID
10 139 (2.56%) SaaS
11 128 (2.36%) GitHub Actions
12 107 (1.97%) Amazon S3
13 102 (1.88%) AWS Lambda
14 91 (1.67%) OpenShift
15 79 (1.45%) Azure Data Factory
16 77 (1.42%) Snowflake
17 75 (1.38%) Dynamics 365
18 74 (1.36%) Power Automate
19 62 (1.14%) PaaS
20 61 (1.12%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 209 (3.85%) Firewall
2 196 (3.61%) DNS
3 124 (2.28%) TCP/IP
4 117 (2.15%) Network Security
5 114 (2.10%) VPN
6 110 (2.02%) WAN
7 103 (1.90%) DHCP
8 88 (1.62%) LAN
9 66 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
10 58 (1.07%) SAN
11 55 (1.01%) BGP
12 48 (0.88%) VLAN
13 41 (0.75%) OSPF
14 36 (0.66%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.66%) VoIP
15 28 (0.52%) Internet
15 28 (0.52%) MPLS
15 28 (0.52%) Wireless
16 21 (0.39%) Junos
17 20 (0.37%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 312 (5.74%) Power BI
2 191 (3.51%) SQL Server
3 163 (3.00%) Data Warehouse
4 148 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
5 146 (2.69%) Relational Database
6 108 (1.99%) Metadata
7 94 (1.73%) NoSQL
8 93 (1.71%) MongoDB
9 86 (1.58%) Big Data
10 85 (1.56%) Data Lake
10 85 (1.56%) Tableau
11 70 (1.29%) MySQL
12 67 (1.23%) Oracle Database
13 60 (1.10%) Oracle Reports
14 49 (0.90%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 46 (0.85%) Hadoop
16 40 (0.74%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (0.66%) DynamoDB
18 35 (0.64%) Pentaho
19 32 (0.59%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 513 (9.44%) JIRA
2 355 (6.53%) Git
3 251 (4.62%) Jenkins
4 164 (3.02%) GitLab
5 83 (1.53%) Selenium
6 54 (0.99%) JUnit
7 42 (0.77%) Postman
8 34 (0.63%) Cucumber
9 30 (0.55%) 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 22 (0.40%) Mockito
13 20 (0.37%) JMeter
14 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
15 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
15 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
16 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
16 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
General
1 2,903 (53.41%) Social Skills
2 2,036 (37.46%) Analytical Skills
3 1,234 (22.70%) Finance
4 549 (10.10%) Public Sector
5 434 (7.99%) Banking
6 216 (3.97%) Organisational Skills
7 192 (3.53%) Documentation Skills
8 182 (3.35%) Legal
9 168 (3.09%) Retail
10 136 (2.50%) Influencing Skills
11 132 (2.43%) Presentation Skills
12 124 (2.28%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 102 (1.88%) Front Office
14 93 (1.71%) Telecoms
15 87 (1.60%) Marketing
16 82 (1.51%) Investment Banking
17 76 (1.40%) Manufacturing
18 57 (1.05%) Financial Institution
18 57 (1.05%) Military
19 52 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 747 (13.74%) Analyst
2 717 (13.19%) Developer
3 477 (8.78%) Senior
4 388 (7.14%) Architect
5 345 (6.35%) Lead
6 309 (5.69%) Business Analyst
7 299 (5.50%) Consultant
8 225 (4.14%) Data Engineer
9 216 (3.97%) Project Manager
10 136 (2.50%) Support Engineer
11 133 (2.45%) Java Developer
12 122 (2.24%) IT Support
13 109 (2.01%) Solutions Architect
14 105 (1.93%) Data Analyst
15 99 (1.82%) Software Engineer
16 98 (1.80%) Administrator
17 97 (1.78%) Senior Developer
18 87 (1.60%) Network Engineer
19 85 (1.56%) Python Developer
20 83 (1.53%) IT Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (6.42%) REST
2 172 (3.16%) Kafka
3 167 (3.07%) RESTful
4 159 (2.93%) SOAP
5 156 (2.87%) .NET
6 150 (2.76%) Spring
7 136 (2.50%) Node.js
7 136 (2.50%) React
8 111 (2.04%) AngularJS
8 111 (2.04%) Spring Boot
9 109 (2.01%) JSON
10 105 (1.93%) CSS
11 104 (1.91%) HTML
12 98 (1.80%) LDAP
12 98 (1.80%) XML
13 94 (1.73%) Middleware
14 79 (1.45%) OAuth
15 71 (1.31%) PySpark
16 64 (1.18%) Oracle Fusion
17 61 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 278 (5.11%) Product Ownership
2 230 (4.23%) Cloud Native
3 213 (3.92%) Onboarding
4 167 (3.07%) Data Centre
5 162 (2.98%) Management Information System
6 144 (2.65%) Self-Motivation
7 138 (2.54%) Analytical Mindset
8 116 (2.13%) Data Protection Act
9 113 (2.08%) Data Structures
10 106 (1.95%) Distributed Systems
11 105 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
12 103 (1.90%) Virtual Team
13 98 (1.80%) Legacy Systems
14 76 (1.40%) Algorithms
15 71 (1.31%) Security Posture
16 65 (1.20%) Driving Licence
16 65 (1.20%) Hybrid Cloud
17 62 (1.14%) Mobile App
18 58 (1.07%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 53 (0.98%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 592 (10.89%) Windows
2 337 (6.20%) Linux
3 113 (2.08%) Windows Server
4 108 (1.99%) Windows 10
5 101 (1.86%) Unix
6 77 (1.42%) Android
7 70 (1.29%) Apple iOS
8 63 (1.16%) Mac OS
9 60 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.39%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 11 (0.20%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
15 7 (0.13%) Mac OS X
15 7 (0.13%) zOS
16 6 (0.11%) Debian
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.092%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.074%) Windows 8
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,547 (28.46%) Agile
2 972 (17.88%) CI/CD
3 869 (15.99%) DevOps
4 827 (15.22%) Continuous Improvement
5 815 (15.00%) Stakeholder Management
6 635 (11.68%) Analytics
7 574 (10.56%) Migration
8 555 (10.21%) Decision-Making
9 532 (9.79%) AI
10 496 (9.13%) Project Management
11 484 (8.91%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 467 (8.59%) Data Modelling
13 428 (7.87%) Test Automation
14 427 (7.86%) Business Intelligence
15 421 (7.75%) Validation
16 403 (7.41%) ITIL
17 402 (7.40%) Customer Service
17 402 (7.40%) Scrum
18 394 (7.25%) Change Management
19 351 (6.46%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,025 (18.86%) Python
2 945 (17.39%) SQL
3 475 (8.74%) Java
4 365 (6.72%) PowerShell
5 291 (5.35%) JavaScript
6 220 (4.05%) C#
7 188 (3.46%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.82%) Bash
9 85 (1.56%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.31%) Shell Script
11 65 (1.20%) C++
12 53 (0.98%) Go
13 45 (0.83%) Perl
14 43 (0.79%) Bicep
14 43 (0.79%) T-SQL
15 39 (0.72%) R
15 39 (0.72%) Scala
16 35 (0.64%) Apex Code
16 35 (0.64%) C
17 33 (0.61%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,183 (21.77%) Security Cleared
2 820 (15.09%) SC Cleared
3 674 (12.40%) Degree
4 228 (4.20%) Computer Science Degree
5 207 (3.81%) DV Cleared
6 173 (3.18%) BPSS Clearance
7 124 (2.28%) Cisco Certification
8 108 (1.99%) PMP
9 106 (1.95%) PMI Certification
10 104 (1.91%) Microsoft Certification
11 102 (1.88%) CISSP
12 90 (1.66%) Master's Degree
13 71 (1.31%) Azure Certification
14 66 (1.21%) CISM
15 57 (1.05%) CCNA
16 56 (1.03%) CCNP
17 46 (0.85%) A+ Certification
18 42 (0.77%) AWS Certification
18 42 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
18 42 (0.77%) MCSE
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 356 (6.55%) Data Quality
2 352 (6.48%) QA
3 162 (2.98%) GDPR
4 111 (2.04%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.86%) PMO
6 92 (1.69%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 91 (1.67%) NIST
8 73 (1.34%) SLA
9 45 (0.83%) GRC
10 35 (0.64%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 26 (0.48%) PSD2
13 26 (0.48%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
15 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
16 15 (0.28%) HL7
16 15 (0.28%) IFRS
17 14 (0.26%) HIPAA
18 13 (0.24%) SEPA
System Software
1 430 (7.91%) Docker
2 398 (7.32%) Active Directory
3 116 (2.13%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.90%) vSphere
5 40 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 31 (0.57%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.42%) Virtual Desktop
8 19 (0.35%) Firmware
9 16 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.18%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
12 9 (0.17%) VMware ESXi
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.092%) IAG
15 4 (0.074%) BitLocker
15 4 (0.074%) Snort
16 3 (0.055%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 495 (9.11%) Kubernetes
2 312 (5.74%) Terraform
3 185 (3.40%) Ansible
4 131 (2.41%) Microsoft Intune
5 125 (2.30%) Grafana
6 99 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.56%) SCCM
8 45 (0.83%) Single Sign-On
9 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
9 37 (0.68%) vCenter Server
10 31 (0.57%) Kibana
11 30 (0.55%) Puppet
12 27 (0.50%) Argo
13 24 (0.44%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 20 (0.37%) Nessus
15 19 (0.35%) Control-M
16 15 (0.28%) vRealize
17 14 (0.26%) IBM Guardium
18 12 (0.22%) HP ALM
19 11 (0.20%) Consul
Vendors
1 978 (17.99%) Microsoft
2 366 (6.73%) Oracle
3 267 (4.91%) SAP
4 233 (4.29%) ServiceNow
5 203 (3.74%) VMware
6 171 (3.15%) Google
7 166 (3.05%) Databricks
8 137 (2.52%) Splunk
9 128 (2.36%) Cisco
10 114 (2.10%) Salesforce
11 77 (1.42%) Red Hat
12 71 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 67 (1.23%) BeyondTrust
13 67 (1.23%) Dell
14 62 (1.14%) Citrix
15 56 (1.03%) Talend
16 53 (0.98%) IBM
17 52 (0.96%) Informatica
17 52 (0.96%) Palo Alto
18 51 (0.94%) Workday