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

6 months to
22 Feb 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,526 4,726 4,780
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.55% 15.37% 10.71%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.63% 17.11% 12.30%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,414 2,842 2,984
10th Percentile £284 £250 £213
25th Percentile £400 £395 £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 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £467 £475
% change year-on-year +1.71% -1.68% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 319 179 377
10th Percentile £13.00 £15.44 £12.13
25th Percentile £15.62 £17.04 £14.16
Median hourly rate £20.00 £27.13 £19.50
Median % change year-on-year -26.27% +39.10% -36.56%
75th Percentile £40.59 £46.25 £48.75
90th Percentile £70.30 £71.50 £77.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.28 £22.88 £17.50
% change year-on-year -24.48% +30.71% -24.41%

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 35,362 27,619 38,854
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 86.73% 89.84% 87.06%
Number of daily rates quoted 22,416 17,059 25,415
10th Percentile £313 £306 £300
25th Percentile £410 £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 £720 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £481 £493 £500
% change year-on-year -2.34% -1.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,120 859 2,186
10th Percentile £14.64 £15.62 £13.29
25th Percentile £17.96 £21.25 £16.25
Median hourly rate £25.77 £32.81 £35.00
Median % change year-on-year -21.46% -6.26% -
75th Percentile £60.75 £63.75 £60.00
90th Percentile £72.50 £75.30 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £25.15 £31.76 £35.00
% change year-on-year -20.81% -9.26% -

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 22 February 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 22 February 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 22 February 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 4,711 £492 -1.60% 3,021
UK excluding London -3 2,840 £475 +1.71% 2,633
London -4 2,080 £513 -2.38% 878
Work from Home +1 1,621 £480 -4.00% 1,218
North of England -2 755 £450 -5.26% 612
South East -2 668 £483 -3.50% 882
Midlands -1 528 £450 +5.88% 440
North West -1 387 £418 -9.62% 357
West Midlands +1 378 £483 +7.81% 272
Yorkshire -4 314 £481 -3.75% 185
South West -2 306 £525 +5.00% 308
Scotland 0 283 £447 -0.61% 105
East of England -3 242 £475 +5.56% 295
East Midlands -2 151 £402 +11.20% 167
Wales +3 67 £400 - 65
North East -5 60 £450 -6.40% 82
Northern Ireland 0 34 £475 +46.15% 29
Channel Islands +1 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
1 216 (3.91%) Confluence
2 163 (2.95%) SharePoint
3 105 (1.90%) Microsoft Exchange
4 92 (1.66%) Apache Spark
5 68 (1.23%) Apache
6 65 (1.18%) SAS
7 50 (0.90%) Apache Airflow
8 35 (0.63%) CMS
9 24 (0.43%) Skype for Business
10 21 (0.38%) WebLogic
11 14 (0.25%) nginx
12 11 (0.20%) JBoss
13 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 9 (0.16%) Jupyter
15 8 (0.14%) Palantir Foundry
16 7 (0.13%) Camunda
17 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
17 6 (0.11%) Oracle Workflow
17 6 (0.11%) Sitecore CMS
Applications
1 312 (5.65%) Microsoft Excel
2 229 (4.14%) Microsoft Office
3 123 (2.23%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 79 (1.43%) Microsoft Project
4 79 (1.43%) MS Visio
5 23 (0.42%) Chatbot
6 18 (0.33%) Spreadsheet
7 10 (0.18%) Sketch
8 9 (0.16%) Adobe XD
9 8 (0.14%) Adobe Creative Suite
10 6 (0.11%) Trello
11 5 (0.090%) Acrobat
12 4 (0.072%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.072%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.072%) InVision
12 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
12 4 (0.072%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.054%) Adobe Illustrator
13 3 (0.054%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.054%) Notion
Business Applications
1 98 (1.77%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.78%) Dynamics CRM
3 20 (0.36%) Payment Gateway
4 18 (0.33%) Aladdin
4 18 (0.33%) Oracle Payables
5 15 (0.27%) NetSuite
5 15 (0.27%) Workday HCM
6 14 (0.25%) SAP ERP
6 14 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.24%) Oracle ERP
7 13 (0.24%) Oracle Receivables
8 12 (0.22%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.22%) Oracle Assets
8 12 (0.22%) Remedy ITSM
9 11 (0.20%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
9 11 (0.20%) SAP EWM
9 11 (0.20%) SAP HR
9 11 (0.20%) SAP WM
10 10 (0.18%) Oracle EBS
10 10 (0.18%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,199 (21.70%) Azure
2 876 (15.85%) AWS
3 403 (7.29%) GCP
4 378 (6.84%) Power Platform
5 342 (6.19%) Microsoft 365
6 264 (4.78%) GitHub
7 246 (4.45%) Azure DevOps
8 189 (3.42%) Serverless
9 160 (2.90%) Entra ID
10 139 (2.52%) SaaS
11 138 (2.50%) GitHub Actions
12 102 (1.85%) Amazon S3
13 92 (1.66%) AWS Lambda
13 92 (1.66%) Snowflake
14 90 (1.63%) OpenShift
15 83 (1.50%) Dynamics 365
16 81 (1.47%) Azure Data Factory
17 71 (1.28%) Power Automate
18 68 (1.23%) PaaS
19 63 (1.14%) Azure AKS
Communications & Networking
1 215 (3.89%) Firewall
2 203 (3.67%) DNS
3 135 (2.44%) TCP/IP
4 115 (2.08%) DHCP
4 115 (2.08%) Network Security
4 115 (2.08%) VPN
5 101 (1.83%) WAN
6 81 (1.47%) LAN
7 53 (0.96%) VLAN
7 53 (0.96%) Wi-Fi
8 48 (0.87%) BGP
9 35 (0.63%) OSPF
10 34 (0.62%) SAN
11 33 (0.60%) VoIP
12 27 (0.49%) Wireless
13 26 (0.47%) SD-WAN
14 25 (0.45%) SSH
15 24 (0.43%) HTTP
15 24 (0.43%) Skype
16 23 (0.42%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 307 (5.56%) Power BI
2 179 (3.24%) SQL Server
3 167 (3.02%) Relational Database
4 164 (2.97%) Data Warehouse
4 164 (2.97%) PostgreSQL
5 111 (2.01%) MongoDB
6 107 (1.94%) NoSQL
7 94 (1.70%) Metadata
8 90 (1.63%) MySQL
9 84 (1.52%) Big Data
10 79 (1.43%) Tableau
11 73 (1.32%) Data Lake
11 73 (1.32%) Oracle Database
12 51 (0.92%) Hadoop
12 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 50 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
14 44 (0.80%) Amazon RDS
15 38 (0.69%) Elasticsearch
16 37 (0.67%) DynamoDB
17 36 (0.65%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 495 (8.96%) JIRA
2 374 (6.77%) Git
3 276 (4.99%) Jenkins
4 176 (3.18%) GitLab
5 88 (1.59%) Selenium
6 66 (1.19%) JUnit
7 48 (0.87%) Postman
8 44 (0.80%) Cucumber
9 34 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.51%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) JMeter
11 26 (0.47%) Maven
12 24 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
13 23 (0.42%) Cypress.io
14 21 (0.38%) SonarQube
15 20 (0.36%) Mockito
16 17 (0.31%) SpecFlow
17 16 (0.29%) CircleCI
18 14 (0.25%) Artifactory
18 14 (0.25%) WebDriver
General
1 3,018 (54.61%) Social Skills
2 1,987 (35.96%) Analytical Skills
3 1,229 (22.24%) Finance
4 544 (9.84%) Public Sector
5 444 (8.03%) Banking
6 218 (3.94%) Organisational Skills
7 173 (3.13%) Documentation Skills
8 170 (3.08%) Legal
9 142 (2.57%) Retail
10 141 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
10 141 (2.55%) Presentation Skills
11 140 (2.53%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 112 (2.03%) Telecoms
13 103 (1.86%) Front Office
14 98 (1.77%) Marketing
15 95 (1.72%) Investment Banking
16 85 (1.54%) Manufacturing
17 67 (1.21%) Military
18 58 (1.05%) Financial Institution
19 47 (0.85%) Law
Job Titles
1 788 (14.26%) Developer
2 785 (14.21%) Analyst
3 490 (8.87%) Senior
4 362 (6.55%) Architect
5 338 (6.12%) Lead
6 323 (5.85%) Business Analyst
7 308 (5.57%) Consultant
8 214 (3.87%) Data Engineer
9 200 (3.62%) Project Manager
10 158 (2.86%) Support Engineer
11 140 (2.53%) Java Developer
12 139 (2.52%) IT Support
13 116 (2.10%) Data Analyst
14 115 (2.08%) Senior Developer
15 108 (1.95%) Software Engineer
16 96 (1.74%) Solutions Architect
17 92 (1.66%) Python Developer
17 92 (1.66%) Support Analyst
18 89 (1.61%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 89 (1.61%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 380 (6.88%) REST
2 190 (3.44%) Kafka
2 190 (3.44%) RESTful
3 188 (3.40%) SOAP
4 175 (3.17%) .NET
5 167 (3.02%) React
6 166 (3.00%) Spring
7 164 (2.97%) Node.js
8 143 (2.59%) HTML
9 134 (2.42%) CSS
10 126 (2.28%) AngularJS
11 117 (2.12%) Spring Boot
12 115 (2.08%) JSON
13 101 (1.83%) XML
14 92 (1.66%) LDAP
15 91 (1.65%) Middleware
16 76 (1.38%) OAuth
17 68 (1.23%) Oracle Fusion
18 66 (1.19%) PySpark
19 62 (1.12%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 271 (4.90%) Product Ownership
2 246 (4.45%) Cloud Native
3 195 (3.53%) Onboarding
4 184 (3.33%) Management Information System
5 139 (2.52%) Data Centre
6 137 (2.48%) Analytical Mindset
7 133 (2.41%) Data Structures
8 118 (2.14%) Self-Motivation
9 113 (2.04%) Data Protection Act
10 103 (1.86%) Enterprise Software
11 96 (1.74%) Algorithms
11 96 (1.74%) Virtual Team
12 88 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
13 84 (1.52%) Distributed Systems
14 80 (1.45%) Security Posture
15 73 (1.32%) CMDB
16 72 (1.30%) Hybrid Cloud
17 66 (1.19%) Driving Licence
18 65 (1.18%) Mobile App
19 58 (1.05%) NHS
Operating Systems
1 563 (10.19%) Windows
2 375 (6.79%) Linux
3 119 (2.15%) Unix
4 108 (1.95%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.81%) Windows 10
6 69 (1.25%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 65 (1.18%) Android
8 63 (1.14%) Apple iOS
9 56 (1.01%) Mac OS
10 22 (0.40%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) CentOS
12 15 (0.27%) Ubuntu
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.14%) Mac OS X
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
17 5 (0.090%) Windows Server 2003
18 4 (0.072%) Debian
18 4 (0.072%) Windows 8
19 3 (0.054%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,604 (29.03%) Agile
2 1,024 (18.53%) CI/CD
3 875 (15.83%) DevOps
4 806 (14.59%) Stakeholder Management
5 786 (14.22%) Continuous Improvement
6 615 (11.13%) Analytics
7 562 (10.17%) Migration
8 558 (10.10%) Decision-Making
9 491 (8.89%) AI
10 471 (8.52%) Project Management
11 467 (8.45%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 449 (8.13%) Data Modelling
13 446 (8.07%) Test Automation
14 414 (7.49%) Scrum
15 411 (7.44%) Business Intelligence
16 399 (7.22%) Validation
17 387 (7.00%) Containerisation
18 386 (6.99%) ITIL
19 385 (6.97%) Computer Science
20 384 (6.95%) Mentoring
Programming Languages
1 1,071 (19.38%) Python
2 935 (16.92%) SQL
3 528 (9.55%) Java
4 363 (6.57%) PowerShell
5 334 (6.04%) JavaScript
6 237 (4.29%) C#
7 220 (3.98%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.77%) Bash
9 82 (1.48%) Shell Script
10 73 (1.32%) PL/SQL
11 65 (1.18%) Go
12 62 (1.12%) C++
13 49 (0.89%) Perl
14 44 (0.80%) Scala
15 40 (0.72%) Ruby
16 38 (0.69%) R
16 38 (0.69%) T-SQL
17 37 (0.67%) Bicep
18 36 (0.65%) VBA
19 33 (0.60%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,157 (20.94%) Security Cleared
2 820 (14.84%) SC Cleared
3 754 (13.64%) Degree
4 258 (4.67%) Computer Science Degree
5 202 (3.66%) DV Cleared
6 160 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 109 (1.97%) Master's Degree
8 106 (1.92%) Microsoft Certification
9 99 (1.79%) PMI Certification
10 97 (1.76%) PMP
11 93 (1.68%) CISSP
12 92 (1.66%) Cisco Certification
13 84 (1.52%) Azure Certification
14 58 (1.05%) CISM
15 57 (1.03%) AWS Certification
16 55 (1.00%) CCNP
17 42 (0.76%) A+ Certification
18 41 (0.74%) CCNA
19 37 (0.67%) ITIL Certification
20 33 (0.60%) Network+ Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 363 (6.57%) QA
2 327 (5.92%) Data Quality
3 164 (2.97%) GDPR
4 122 (2.21%) Accessibility
5 85 (1.54%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 85 (1.54%) NIST
5 85 (1.54%) PMO
6 59 (1.07%) SLA
7 40 (0.72%) PCI DSS
8 34 (0.62%) WCAG
9 31 (0.56%) GRC
10 26 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 25 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.42%) PSD2
13 20 (0.36%) ISO 20022
14 17 (0.31%) ISO 8583
15 16 (0.29%) EU AI Act
16 15 (0.27%) HIPAA
17 13 (0.24%) California Consumer Privacy Act
17 13 (0.24%) HL7
System Software
1 487 (8.81%) Docker
2 384 (6.95%) Active Directory
3 122 (2.21%) VMware Infrastructure
4 44 (0.80%) Hyper-V
5 42 (0.76%) vSphere
6 33 (0.60%) VMware NSX
7 25 (0.45%) Virtual Desktop
8 23 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
9 18 (0.33%) Firmware
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.16%) ACF2
13 7 (0.13%) HDFS
13 7 (0.13%) Squid
13 7 (0.13%) VMware ESXi
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle RAC
15 5 (0.090%) vCloud
16 4 (0.072%) Snort
17 3 (0.054%) ISA Server
17 3 (0.054%) NFS
Systems Management
1 536 (9.70%) Kubernetes
2 317 (5.74%) Terraform
3 203 (3.67%) Ansible
4 136 (2.46%) Grafana
5 108 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
6 107 (1.94%) Prometheus
7 98 (1.77%) SCCM
8 50 (0.90%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.71%) Puppet
10 38 (0.69%) Kibana
11 32 (0.58%) FortiGate
12 31 (0.56%) Argo
12 31 (0.56%) Nessus
13 25 (0.45%) Active Directory Federation Services
14 24 (0.43%) vCenter Server
15 22 (0.40%) Control-M
16 21 (0.38%) IBM Guardium
17 18 (0.33%) Red Hat Satellite
18 13 (0.24%) vRealize
19 12 (0.22%) CSIRT
Vendors
1 1,023 (18.51%) Microsoft
2 359 (6.50%) Oracle
3 275 (4.98%) SAP
4 240 (4.34%) ServiceNow
5 211 (3.82%) VMware
6 178 (3.22%) Google
7 164 (2.97%) Databricks
8 156 (2.82%) Splunk
9 133 (2.41%) Cisco
10 119 (2.15%) Salesforce
11 91 (1.65%) Red Hat
12 73 (1.32%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.14%) BeyondTrust
14 56 (1.01%) IBM
15 54 (0.98%) Palo Alto
15 54 (0.98%) Talend
15 54 (0.98%) Workday
16 52 (0.94%) Citrix
17 50 (0.90%) Dell
17 50 (0.90%) Informatica