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

6 months to
14 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,578 5,228 4,450
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.45% 15.88% 11.43%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.32% 17.55% 13.37%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,140 3,146 2,740
10th Percentile £250 £250 £256
25th Percentile £375 £375 £394
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £493 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.03% -2.50% -2.91%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £614
90th Percentile £700 £700 £713
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £457 £475
% change year-on-year -1.48% -3.84% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 489 313 280
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.67 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.13 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.00 £21.10 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -9.95% +30.01% -70.49%
75th Percentile £39.50 £35.00 £31.13
90th Percentile £73.15 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.75 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.37% +15.96% -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 45,278 29,786 33,285
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.80% 90.49% 85.51%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,840 18,586 21,275
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £423 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,823 1,710 1,832
10th Percentile £14.22 £14.20 £14.05
25th Percentile £18.50 £17.31 £18.46
Median hourly rate £42.30 £25.15 £41.50
Median % change year-on-year +68.19% -39.40% -2.35%
75th Percentile £68.00 £48.75 £65.00
90th Percentile £81.25 £68.00 £74.83
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.00 £42.50
% change year-on-year +91.13% -45.88% +13.33%

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 14 August 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 14 August 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 14 August 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 4,848 £495 +0.51% 9,027
UK excluding London -4 2,974 £450 -1.48% 5,561
London -12 2,093 £525 +5.00% 4,577
Work from Home -5 1,539 £500 - 3,453
South East -4 772 £481 +1.16% 1,396
North of England -11 720 £447 -5.89% 1,294
Midlands -6 549 £450 +4.53% 826
West Midlands -10 398 £450 -2.17% 519
South West -1 353 £500 +6.67% 697
North West -12 343 £450 -6.25% 709
Yorkshire -8 319 £450 -5.16% 421
Scotland -5 266 £454 +0.83% 464
East of England +1 254 £450 -10.00% 589
East Midlands -1 148 £470 +26.51% 308
Wales -5 64 £475 +26.67% 154
North East -16 63 £375 -16.67% 184
Northern Ireland -5 25 £384 -22.63% 280
Channel Islands -2 1 - - 2

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
1 230 (4.12%) Confluence
2 224 (4.02%) SharePoint
3 110 (1.97%) Microsoft Exchange
4 66 (1.18%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 42 (0.75%) Apache
6 42 (0.75%) SAS
7 33 (0.59%) Oracle Workflow
8 30 (0.54%) CMS
9 16 (0.29%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 8 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) Appian
14 7 (0.13%) Mule
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) WordPress
Applications
1 317 (5.68%) Microsoft Excel
2 262 (4.70%) Microsoft Office
3 117 (2.10%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 77 (1.38%) MS Visio
5 63 (1.13%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 22 (0.39%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.30%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.27%) Sketch
11 13 (0.23%) Revit
12 12 (0.22%) Trello
13 10 (0.18%) CATIA
14 7 (0.13%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
16 5 (0.090%) Navisworks
17 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
17 4 (0.072%) Photoshop
18 3 (0.054%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 137 (2.46%) SAP S/4HANA
2 46 (0.82%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 27 (0.48%) NetSuite
4 27 (0.48%) Remedy ITSM
5 25 (0.45%) SAP GRC
6 19 (0.34%) Workday HCM
7 13 (0.23%) Aladdin
7 13 (0.23%) iTrent
7 13 (0.23%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.23%) Salesforce CRM
7 13 (0.23%) SAP SD
8 10 (0.18%) Finacle
8 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
8 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
9 9 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
9 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
9 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
10 8 (0.14%) Loan IQ
10 8 (0.14%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
Cloud Services
1 1,095 (19.63%) Azure
2 811 (14.54%) AWS
3 454 (8.14%) Microsoft 365
4 429 (7.69%) Power Platform
5 322 (5.77%) GCP
6 268 (4.80%) Azure DevOps
7 235 (4.21%) Entra ID
8 198 (3.55%) GitHub
9 157 (2.81%) SaaS
10 124 (2.22%) Serverless
11 97 (1.74%) GitHub Actions
12 93 (1.67%) Power Automate
13 80 (1.43%) Dynamics 365
14 73 (1.31%) Amazon S3
15 72 (1.29%) OneDrive
16 69 (1.24%) AWS Lambda
17 68 (1.22%) PowerApps
18 66 (1.18%) Azure Data Factory
18 66 (1.18%) Microsoft Copilot
19 63 (1.13%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 235 (4.21%) DNS
2 197 (3.53%) Firewall
3 159 (2.85%) VPN
4 141 (2.53%) DHCP
5 135 (2.42%) TCP/IP
6 131 (2.35%) WAN
7 108 (1.94%) LAN
8 100 (1.79%) Network Security
9 85 (1.52%) Wi-Fi
10 81 (1.45%) SAN
11 60 (1.08%) VLAN
11 60 (1.08%) Wireless
12 55 (0.99%) BGP
13 43 (0.77%) SD-WAN
14 36 (0.65%) MPLS
14 36 (0.65%) OSPF
14 36 (0.65%) VoIP
15 33 (0.59%) Structured Cabling
16 29 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 25 (0.45%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 330 (5.92%) Power BI
2 215 (3.85%) SQL Server
3 175 (3.14%) Relational Database
4 168 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
5 154 (2.76%) PostgreSQL
6 107 (1.92%) Metadata
6 107 (1.92%) MongoDB
7 99 (1.77%) NoSQL
8 87 (1.56%) Tableau
9 83 (1.49%) Data Lake
10 61 (1.09%) Big Data
11 56 (1.00%) MySQL
12 54 (0.97%) Oracle Database
13 50 (0.90%) Oracle Reports
14 38 (0.68%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 35 (0.63%) Db2
16 31 (0.56%) Pentaho
17 28 (0.50%) Power Query
18 27 (0.48%) DynamoDB
19 26 (0.47%) Amazon Athena
Development Applications
1 488 (8.75%) JIRA
2 354 (6.35%) Git
3 186 (3.33%) Jenkins
4 135 (2.42%) GitLab
5 74 (1.33%) Selenium
6 39 (0.70%) Cypress.io
7 38 (0.68%) Gradle
8 37 (0.66%) Maven
8 37 (0.66%) Postman
9 30 (0.54%) Cucumber
10 28 (0.50%) REST Assured
11 26 (0.47%) Bitbucket
11 26 (0.47%) JUnit
12 21 (0.38%) JMeter
13 18 (0.32%) WebDriver
14 16 (0.29%) Mockito
14 16 (0.29%) Oracle Forms
15 15 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 14 (0.25%) SonarQube
16 14 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,930 (52.53%) Social Skills
2 2,336 (41.88%) Analytical Skills
3 1,301 (23.32%) Finance
4 577 (10.34%) Public Sector
5 437 (7.83%) Banking
6 242 (4.34%) Organisational Skills
7 201 (3.60%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (3.59%) Retail
9 182 (3.26%) Manufacturing
10 181 (3.24%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 147 (2.64%) Influencing Skills
12 145 (2.60%) Legal
13 124 (2.22%) Front Office
14 121 (2.17%) Marketing
15 115 (2.06%) Presentation Skills
16 114 (2.04%) Telecoms
17 91 (1.63%) Investment Banking
18 84 (1.51%) Back Office
19 66 (1.18%) Aerospace
20 60 (1.08%) Law
Job Titles
1 725 (13.00%) Analyst
2 689 (12.35%) Developer
3 510 (9.14%) Senior
4 421 (7.55%) Lead
5 360 (6.45%) Architect
6 252 (4.52%) Consultant
7 248 (4.45%) Business Analyst
8 230 (4.12%) Data Engineer
9 212 (3.80%) IT Support
10 202 (3.62%) Support Engineer
11 168 (3.01%) Project Manager
12 146 (2.62%) IT Engineer
13 138 (2.47%) Administrator
14 134 (2.40%) Java Developer
15 116 (2.08%) Data Analyst
16 109 (1.95%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 108 (1.94%) Solutions Architect
18 102 (1.83%) Network Engineer
19 96 (1.72%) Software Engineer
20 94 (1.69%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 359 (6.44%) REST
2 174 (3.12%) RESTful
3 165 (2.96%) .NET
4 151 (2.71%) React
5 149 (2.67%) Spring
6 147 (2.64%) Kafka
7 146 (2.62%) SOAP
8 126 (2.26%) JSON
9 120 (2.15%) CSS
10 118 (2.12%) XML
11 114 (2.04%) HTML
12 113 (2.03%) Middleware
13 111 (1.99%) Spring Boot
14 94 (1.69%) Node.js
15 92 (1.65%) Web Services
16 86 (1.54%) AngularJS
17 78 (1.40%) OAuth
18 75 (1.34%) PySpark
19 55 (0.99%) Playwright
20 50 (0.90%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 304 (5.45%) Onboarding
2 269 (4.82%) Product Ownership
3 249 (4.46%) Cloud Native
4 210 (3.76%) Self-Motivation
5 202 (3.62%) Data Centre
6 179 (3.21%) Enterprise Software
7 165 (2.96%) Distributed Systems
8 164 (2.94%) Management Information System
9 157 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
10 134 (2.40%) Legacy Systems
11 131 (2.35%) Data Structures
12 125 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
13 97 (1.74%) Virtual Team
14 84 (1.51%) Driving Licence
15 70 (1.25%) AI Agents
16 69 (1.24%) Algorithms
17 66 (1.18%) CMDB
18 58 (1.04%) PKI
19 57 (1.02%) Mobile App
20 55 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 751 (13.46%) Windows
2 302 (5.41%) Linux
3 186 (3.33%) Windows Server
4 129 (2.31%) Windows 10
5 106 (1.90%) Unix
6 96 (1.72%) Android
7 90 (1.61%) Apple iOS
8 85 (1.52%) Mac OS
9 43 (0.77%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.29%) VMS
11 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.22%) zOS
13 8 (0.14%) Solaris
14 6 (0.11%) CentOS
14 6 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
14 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
14 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
14 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
14 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,542 (27.64%) Agile
2 1,153 (20.67%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,085 (19.45%) Stakeholder Management
4 941 (16.87%) CI/CD
5 883 (15.83%) DevOps
6 715 (12.82%) AI
7 607 (10.88%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 595 (10.67%) Decision-Making
9 592 (10.61%) Analytics
10 568 (10.18%) Migration
11 534 (9.57%) Customer Service
12 515 (9.23%) ITIL
13 455 (8.16%) Validation
14 438 (7.85%) Test Automation
15 432 (7.74%) Business Intelligence
16 428 (7.67%) Data Modelling
17 411 (7.37%) Scrum
18 354 (6.35%) Roadmaps
19 351 (6.29%) ITSM
20 349 (6.26%) Project Management
Programming Languages
1 990 (17.75%) SQL
2 909 (16.30%) Python
3 441 (7.91%) Java
4 318 (5.70%) JavaScript
5 317 (5.68%) PowerShell
6 186 (3.33%) C#
7 150 (2.69%) Bash
8 124 (2.22%) TypeScript
9 95 (1.70%) PL/SQL
10 77 (1.38%) C++
11 47 (0.84%) T-SQL
12 41 (0.74%) Shell Script
13 39 (0.70%) Go
14 37 (0.66%) Scala
15 36 (0.65%) Bicep
15 36 (0.65%) C
16 34 (0.61%) Kotlin
17 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
18 31 (0.56%) R
19 28 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,206 (21.62%) Security Cleared
2 834 (14.95%) SC Cleared
3 640 (11.47%) Degree
4 210 (3.76%) DV Cleared
5 197 (3.53%) Computer Science Degree
6 164 (2.94%) Microsoft Certification
7 154 (2.76%) BPSS Clearance
8 134 (2.40%) Cisco Certification
9 82 (1.47%) Azure Certification
10 80 (1.43%) CISSP
11 77 (1.38%) PMP
12 76 (1.36%) A+ Certification
12 76 (1.36%) CCNA
13 73 (1.31%) PMI Certification
14 57 (1.02%) Master's Degree
15 56 (1.00%) Network+ Certification
16 53 (0.95%) MCSE
17 51 (0.91%) CISM
18 43 (0.77%) AWS Certification
19 41 (0.74%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 402 (7.21%) Data Quality
2 353 (6.33%) QA
3 148 (2.65%) Accessibility
4 139 (2.49%) GDPR
5 123 (2.21%) SLA
6 95 (1.70%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 90 (1.61%) PMO
8 72 (1.29%) NIST
9 68 (1.22%) GRC
10 35 (0.63%) WCAG
11 29 (0.52%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 26 (0.47%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.41%) GxP
14 16 (0.29%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 15 (0.27%) COBIT
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 15 (0.27%) NCSC
15 15 (0.27%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.25%) ISO 20022
17 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
System Software
1 445 (7.98%) Active Directory
2 362 (6.49%) Docker
3 153 (2.74%) VMware Infrastructure
4 61 (1.09%) Hyper-V
5 58 (1.04%) VMware ESXi
6 51 (0.91%) VMware NSX
7 49 (0.88%) vSphere
8 33 (0.59%) Virtual Desktop
9 30 (0.54%) Virtual Machines
10 25 (0.45%) vCloud
11 21 (0.38%) Firmware
11 21 (0.38%) IAG
12 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
13 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 6 (0.11%) NFS
15 5 (0.090%) Microsoft App-V
16 4 (0.072%) Squid
17 3 (0.054%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.054%) Microsoft Virtual Server
18 2 (0.036%) UAG
Systems Management
1 403 (7.22%) Kubernetes
2 327 (5.86%) Terraform
3 170 (3.05%) Ansible
4 141 (2.53%) Microsoft Intune
5 96 (1.72%) SCCM
6 90 (1.61%) Grafana
7 76 (1.36%) Prometheus
8 57 (1.02%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.63%) SCOM
10 34 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
11 26 (0.47%) FortiGate
12 23 (0.41%) Control-M
13 21 (0.38%) Jamf Pro
13 21 (0.38%) WSUS
14 15 (0.27%) Argo
15 13 (0.23%) NetBackup
16 12 (0.22%) Puppet
17 11 (0.20%) Kibana
17 11 (0.20%) Progress Chef
18 10 (0.18%) Istio
Vendors
1 1,197 (21.46%) Microsoft
2 404 (7.24%) Oracle
3 356 (6.38%) ServiceNow
4 351 (6.29%) SAP
5 217 (3.89%) VMware
6 177 (3.17%) Google
7 151 (2.71%) Salesforce
8 137 (2.46%) Cisco
9 119 (2.13%) Databricks
9 119 (2.13%) Splunk
10 79 (1.42%) Workday
11 71 (1.27%) Dynatrace
12 70 (1.25%) Adobe
13 62 (1.11%) Dell
14 61 (1.09%) Apple
15 58 (1.04%) MuleSoft
16 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
17 53 (0.95%) Citrix
17 53 (0.95%) IBM
18 45 (0.81%) Red Hat