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

6 months to
28 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 5,326 4,944 4,763
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.34% 16.84% 11.00%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.40% 18.55% 12.74%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,222 3,089 2,927
10th Percentile £268 £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 £716 £700 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £470 £475
% change year-on-year -2.13% -1.05% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 243 410
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.46 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.96 £16.26 £13.86
Median hourly rate £21.25 £23.00 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -7.61% +31.43% -59.71%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.25 £36.50
90th Percentile £74.26 £67.20 £61.69
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £21.46 £15.00
% change year-on-year -13.79% +43.07% -55.43%

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 39,735 26,655 37,382
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.58% 90.81% 86.33%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,044 17,231 24,097
10th Percentile £319 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £523 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.40% -0.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £631 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £485 £485 £500
% change year-on-year - -3.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,400 1,068 2,424
10th Percentile £14.96 £14.84 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.98 £18.51 £16.00
Median hourly rate £40.25 £29.15 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year +38.08% -16.71% -6.27%
75th Percentile £65.60 £62.24 £59.44
90th Percentile £78.75 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.00 £28.00 £35.98
% change year-on-year +50.00% -22.17% -0.07%

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 28 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 28 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 28 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 4,568 £488 -2.50% 2,960
UK excluding London -5 2,796 £460 -2.13% 2,506
London -10 1,965 £513 -2.38% 948
Work from Home 0 1,512 £475 -5.00% 1,213
North of England -6 769 £447 -5.89% 597
South East -5 666 £488 -2.50% 772
Midlands -4 507 £450 +1.98% 437
North West -6 364 £402 -17.28% 353
Yorkshire -5 360 £455 -4.16% 169
West Midlands -6 342 £475 +5.56% 266
South West -2 319 £500 - 278
Scotland -2 255 £425 -5.56% 120
East of England -4 208 £450 - 238
East Midlands 0 164 £443 +19.84% 170
Wales -2 68 £395 +19.27% 75
North East -7 52 £425 -16.67% 84
Northern Ireland -1 26 £439 +25.29% 62
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
1 214 (4.02%) Confluence
2 141 (2.65%) SharePoint
3 94 (1.76%) Microsoft Exchange
4 90 (1.69%) Apache Spark
5 66 (1.24%) Apache
6 49 (0.92%) Apache Airflow
7 48 (0.90%) SAS
8 30 (0.56%) CMS
9 19 (0.36%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.24%) nginx
10 13 (0.24%) WebLogic
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
12 7 (0.13%) Camunda
12 7 (0.13%) CICS
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
14 5 (0.094%) JBoss
Applications
1 305 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 228 (4.28%) Microsoft Office
3 114 (2.14%) 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 7 (0.13%) CATIA
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 6 (0.11%) AutoCAD
12 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
12 5 (0.094%) Maya
13 4 (0.075%) InDesign
13 4 (0.075%) InVision
13 4 (0.075%) Revit
13 4 (0.075%) Zeplin
Business Applications
1 110 (2.07%) 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 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
7 15 (0.28%) 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
12 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
12 10 (0.19%) Teamcenter
13 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
13 9 (0.17%) Shopify
14 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
14 8 (0.15%) Remedy ITSM
14 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
Cloud Services
1 1,091 (20.48%) Azure
2 825 (15.49%) AWS
3 395 (7.42%) Power Platform
4 354 (6.65%) GCP
5 349 (6.55%) Microsoft 365
6 246 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
7 229 (4.30%) GitHub
8 170 (3.19%) Entra ID
9 163 (3.06%) Serverless
10 128 (2.40%) SaaS
11 116 (2.18%) GitHub Actions
12 102 (1.92%) Amazon S3
13 95 (1.78%) AWS Lambda
14 76 (1.43%) OpenShift
15 75 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
16 74 (1.39%) Snowflake
17 73 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
17 73 (1.37%) Power Automate
18 59 (1.11%) PowerApps
19 55 (1.03%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 187 (3.51%) Firewall
2 186 (3.49%) DNS
3 120 (2.25%) TCP/IP
4 110 (2.07%) VPN
5 108 (2.03%) Network Security
6 103 (1.93%) WAN
7 99 (1.86%) DHCP
8 79 (1.48%) LAN
9 72 (1.35%) SAN
10 64 (1.20%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.96%) BGP
12 47 (0.88%) VLAN
13 44 (0.83%) OSPF
14 37 (0.69%) SD-WAN
15 35 (0.66%) 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
1 313 (5.88%) Power BI
2 201 (3.77%) SQL Server
3 164 (3.08%) Data Warehouse
4 140 (2.63%) PostgreSQL
5 135 (2.53%) Relational Database
6 118 (2.22%) Metadata
7 92 (1.73%) Tableau
8 91 (1.71%) MongoDB
9 88 (1.65%) NoSQL
10 86 (1.61%) Big Data
11 80 (1.50%) Data Lake
12 64 (1.20%) Oracle Reports
13 62 (1.16%) MySQL
14 55 (1.03%) Oracle Database
15 49 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 45 (0.84%) Hadoop
17 34 (0.64%) Amazon RDS
18 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
18 32 (0.60%) DynamoDB
19 30 (0.56%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 502 (9.43%) JIRA
2 311 (5.84%) Git
3 210 (3.94%) Jenkins
4 141 (2.65%) GitLab
5 72 (1.35%) Selenium
6 41 (0.77%) Postman
7 33 (0.62%) Cucumber
8 31 (0.58%) JUnit
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 26 (0.49%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 22 (0.41%) JMeter
13 21 (0.39%) Maven
14 19 (0.36%) Mockito
15 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
15 18 (0.34%) Sonatype Nexus
16 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
17 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
18 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
19 13 (0.24%) Artifactory
General
1 2,787 (52.33%) Social Skills
2 2,051 (38.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,239 (23.26%) Finance
4 517 (9.71%) Public Sector
5 412 (7.74%) Banking
6 224 (4.21%) Organisational Skills
7 187 (3.51%) Retail
8 183 (3.44%) Documentation Skills
9 162 (3.04%) Legal
10 139 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
11 130 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 119 (2.23%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 96 (1.80%) Front Office
13 96 (1.80%) Telecoms
14 88 (1.65%) Manufacturing
15 86 (1.61%) Marketing
16 76 (1.43%) Investment Banking
17 58 (1.09%) Financial Institution
18 57 (1.07%) Back Office
19 55 (1.03%) Law
Job Titles
1 738 (13.86%) Analyst
2 667 (12.52%) Developer
3 462 (8.67%) Senior
4 376 (7.06%) Architect
5 335 (6.29%) Lead
6 301 (5.65%) Business Analyst
7 270 (5.07%) Consultant
8 230 (4.32%) Data Engineer
9 205 (3.85%) Project Manager
10 130 (2.44%) Support Engineer
11 128 (2.40%) IT Support
12 125 (2.35%) Java Developer
13 118 (2.22%) Data Analyst
14 105 (1.97%) Administrator
15 102 (1.92%) Solutions Architect
16 94 (1.76%) Software Engineer
17 90 (1.69%) IT Engineer
18 89 (1.67%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 87 (1.63%) Network Engineer
20 79 (1.48%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 314 (5.90%) REST
2 163 (3.06%) Kafka
3 149 (2.80%) SOAP
4 148 (2.78%) .NET
4 148 (2.78%) RESTful
5 142 (2.67%) Spring
6 133 (2.50%) React
7 128 (2.40%) Node.js
8 115 (2.16%) CSS
9 110 (2.07%) HTML
10 107 (2.01%) AngularJS
11 106 (1.99%) Spring Boot
12 103 (1.93%) JSON
13 95 (1.78%) LDAP
14 93 (1.75%) XML
15 90 (1.69%) Middleware
16 78 (1.46%) OAuth
17 73 (1.37%) PySpark
18 56 (1.05%) Oracle Fusion
19 52 (0.98%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 274 (5.14%) Product Ownership
2 225 (4.22%) Onboarding
3 219 (4.11%) Cloud Native
4 185 (3.47%) Data Centre
5 158 (2.97%) Management Information System
6 152 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
7 142 (2.67%) Analytical Mindset
8 115 (2.16%) Distributed Systems
9 111 (2.08%) Legacy Systems
10 110 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
10 110 (2.07%) Data Structures
11 107 (2.01%) Virtual Team
12 103 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
13 71 (1.33%) Driving Licence
14 70 (1.31%) Security Posture
15 62 (1.16%) Algorithms
16 61 (1.15%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.11%) Hybrid Cloud
18 54 (1.01%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 53 (1.00%) AI Agents
Operating Systems
1 590 (11.08%) Windows
2 313 (5.88%) Linux
3 113 (2.12%) Windows 10
4 103 (1.93%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.88%) Unix
6 92 (1.73%) Android
7 81 (1.52%) Apple iOS
8 69 (1.30%) Mac OS
9 56 (1.05%) 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 1,485 (27.88%) Agile
2 907 (17.03%) CI/CD
3 814 (15.28%) DevOps
4 807 (15.15%) Continuous Improvement
5 781 (14.66%) Stakeholder Management
6 602 (11.30%) Analytics
7 585 (10.98%) Decision-Making
8 576 (10.81%) AI
8 576 (10.81%) Migration
9 467 (8.77%) Project Management
10 458 (8.60%) Data Modelling
11 457 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 428 (8.04%) Validation
13 418 (7.85%) Business Intelligence
14 417 (7.83%) Customer Service
15 400 (7.51%) ITIL
16 398 (7.47%) Test Automation
17 380 (7.13%) Scrum
18 378 (7.10%) Change Management
19 347 (6.52%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 983 (18.46%) Python
2 922 (17.31%) SQL
3 457 (8.58%) Java
4 330 (6.20%) PowerShell
5 286 (5.37%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.79%) C#
7 174 (3.27%) TypeScript
8 130 (2.44%) Bash
9 84 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 68 (1.28%) C++
11 64 (1.20%) 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%) Scala
17 35 (0.66%) T-SQL
18 30 (0.56%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,152 (21.63%) Security Cleared
2 805 (15.11%) SC Cleared
3 654 (12.28%) Degree
4 223 (4.19%) Computer Science Degree
5 190 (3.57%) DV Cleared
6 176 (3.30%) BPSS Clearance
7 121 (2.27%) Cisco Certification
8 115 (2.16%) Microsoft Certification
9 100 (1.88%) CISSP
10 92 (1.73%) PMP
11 88 (1.65%) PMI Certification
12 84 (1.58%) Master's Degree
13 67 (1.26%) Azure Certification
14 64 (1.20%) CISM
15 63 (1.18%) CCNA
16 60 (1.13%) A+ Certification
17 54 (1.01%) Network+ Certification
18 51 (0.96%) MCSE
19 42 (0.79%) CCNP
20 36 (0.68%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 349 (6.55%) Data Quality
2 327 (6.14%) QA
3 160 (3.00%) GDPR
4 107 (2.01%) Accessibility
5 98 (1.84%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 95 (1.78%) PMO
7 84 (1.58%) NIST
8 75 (1.41%) SLA
9 48 (0.90%) 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
1 387 (7.27%) Active Directory
2 369 (6.93%) Docker
3 116 (2.18%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.92%) vSphere
5 39 (0.73%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.62%) Hyper-V
7 20 (0.38%) Firmware
8 18 (0.34%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.32%) Virtual Machines
10 16 (0.30%) 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
1 449 (8.43%) Kubernetes
2 308 (5.78%) Terraform
3 189 (3.55%) Ansible
4 128 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 122 (2.29%) Grafana
6 91 (1.71%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.56%) SCCM
8 40 (0.75%) vCenter Server
9 37 (0.69%) FortiGate
9 37 (0.69%) Single Sign-On
10 29 (0.54%) Kibana
11 27 (0.51%) Argo
11 27 (0.51%) Puppet
12 23 (0.43%) Control-M
13 21 (0.39%) Nessus
14 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.28%) WSUS
16 14 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 13 (0.24%) vRealize
18 12 (0.23%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 978 (18.36%) Microsoft
2 360 (6.76%) Oracle
3 290 (5.44%) SAP
4 236 (4.43%) ServiceNow
5 196 (3.68%) VMware
6 165 (3.10%) Google
7 158 (2.97%) Databricks
8 128 (2.40%) Cisco
9 121 (2.27%) Splunk
10 118 (2.22%) Salesforce
11 76 (1.43%) Dell
12 72 (1.35%) CyberArk
13 69 (1.30%) Red Hat
14 67 (1.26%) BeyondTrust
15 61 (1.15%) Workday
16 59 (1.11%) Adobe
17 55 (1.03%) Citrix
18 52 (0.98%) IBM
19 49 (0.92%) HP
20 48 (0.90%) Informatica