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 7 May 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
7 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,301 4,978 4,758
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.11% 17.00% 10.96%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.16% 18.69% 12.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,185 3,112 2,912
10th Percentile £263 £250 £234
25th Percentile £382 £398 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £505
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% -1.04% -3.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £709 £700 £727
UK excluding London median daily rate £460 £475 £488
% change year-on-year -3.16% -2.56% -2.50%
Number of hourly rates quoted 336 247 412
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.42 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.86 £13.85
Median hourly rate £21.25 £22.88 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -7.10% +34.56% -65.45%
75th Percentile £51.27 £41.25 £37.38
90th Percentile £74.26 £66.00 £62.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.13 £21.34 £15.00
% change year-on-year -15.02% +42.23% -63.74%

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 40,275 26,638 37,488
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.44% 90.95% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,293 17,157 24,168
10th Percentile £320 £306 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £520 £525
Median % change year-on-year -3.85% -0.95% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £630 £638
90th Percentile £725 £745 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £488 £480 £500
% change year-on-year +1.56% -4.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,413 1,083 2,449
10th Percentile £14.84 £14.63 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.75 £18.50 £16.00
Median hourly rate £41.56 £29.00 £35.96
Median % change year-on-year +43.29% -19.35% -0.11%
75th Percentile £67.25 £61.50 £60.00
90th Percentile £79.40 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £27.94 £37.50
% change year-on-year +56.37% -25.49% +7.14%

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 7 May 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 7 May 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 7 May 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 4,541 £488 -2.50% 3,448
UK excluding London -5 2,818 £460 -3.16% 2,762
London -12 1,930 £510 -2.86% 1,047
Work from Home -1 1,511 £475 -5.00% 1,351
North of England -6 759 £450 -8.16% 718
South East -6 658 £488 -2.50% 809
Midlands -4 522 £450 +0.22% 462
North West -5 368 £408 -17.01% 397
West Midlands -5 355 £475 +3.26% 276
Yorkshire -5 343 £468 -1.47% 237
South West -1 323 £500 -1.23% 306
Scotland 0 267 £431 -4.17% 126
East of England -4 214 £450 - 298
East Midlands 0 166 £443 +11.04% 187
Wales -3 70 £400 +20.78% 72
North East -5 55 £425 -11.23% 90
Northern Ireland -2 26 £430 +14.67% 38
Channel Islands -4 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
1 211 (3.98%) Confluence
2 147 (2.77%) SharePoint
3 89 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 86 (1.62%) Apache Spark
5 62 (1.17%) Apache
6 50 (0.94%) Apache Airflow
7 47 (0.89%) SAS
8 33 (0.62%) CMS
9 20 (0.38%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
13 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
13 7 (0.13%) Camunda
13 7 (0.13%) CICS
13 7 (0.13%) Sitecore CMS
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle SOA Suite
15 4 (0.075%) Jupyter
Applications
1 303 (5.72%) Microsoft Excel
2 225 (4.24%) Microsoft Office
3 111 (2.09%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 80 (1.51%) Microsoft Project
5 77 (1.45%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.45%) Chatbot
8 11 (0.21%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 10 (0.19%) Sketch
10 8 (0.15%) Adobe XD
10 8 (0.15%) CATIA
11 7 (0.13%) AutoCAD
11 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
11 7 (0.13%) Trello
12 6 (0.11%) Revit
13 5 (0.094%) Maya
14 4 (0.075%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.075%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.075%) InDesign
15 3 (0.057%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 122 (2.30%) SAP S/4HANA
2 33 (0.62%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.42%) 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
9 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
10 12 (0.23%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.23%) Workday HCM
11 10 (0.19%) iTrent
11 10 (0.19%) NetSuite
11 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
11 10 (0.19%) Remedy ITSM
11 10 (0.19%) SAP GRC
12 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.17%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.17%) Shopify
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,079 (20.35%) Azure
2 817 (15.41%) AWS
3 401 (7.56%) Power Platform
4 350 (6.60%) Microsoft 365
5 346 (6.53%) GCP
6 243 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
7 220 (4.15%) GitHub
8 161 (3.04%) Entra ID
9 149 (2.81%) Serverless
10 126 (2.38%) SaaS
11 113 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
12 96 (1.81%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
14 77 (1.45%) Dynamics 365
15 75 (1.41%) Snowflake
16 73 (1.38%) OpenShift
16 73 (1.38%) Power Automate
17 71 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
18 59 (1.11%) PowerApps
19 52 (0.98%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 191 (3.60%) DNS
2 179 (3.38%) Firewall
3 122 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 107 (2.02%) VPN
5 103 (1.94%) WAN
6 101 (1.91%) DHCP
7 96 (1.81%) Network Security
8 84 (1.58%) SAN
9 77 (1.45%) LAN
10 64 (1.21%) Wi-Fi
11 50 (0.94%) BGP
12 48 (0.91%) VLAN
13 43 (0.81%) OSPF
14 38 (0.72%) SD-WAN
15 31 (0.58%) VoIP
16 29 (0.55%) Wireless
17 26 (0.49%) Internet
17 26 (0.49%) VXLAN
18 25 (0.47%) MPLS
19 21 (0.40%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 318 (6.00%) Power BI
2 202 (3.81%) SQL Server
3 162 (3.06%) Data Warehouse
4 135 (2.55%) Relational Database
5 134 (2.53%) PostgreSQL
6 116 (2.19%) Metadata
7 88 (1.66%) Tableau
8 86 (1.62%) MongoDB
9 83 (1.57%) Big Data
9 83 (1.57%) NoSQL
10 77 (1.45%) Data Lake
11 62 (1.17%) MySQL
11 62 (1.17%) Oracle Reports
12 54 (1.02%) Oracle Database
13 51 (0.96%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 43 (0.81%) Hadoop
15 35 (0.66%) Amazon RDS
16 32 (0.60%) Azure SQL Database
17 31 (0.58%) Power Query
18 29 (0.55%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 498 (9.39%) JIRA
2 309 (5.83%) Git
3 200 (3.77%) Jenkins
4 141 (2.66%) GitLab
5 66 (1.25%) Selenium
6 39 (0.74%) Postman
7 31 (0.58%) Cucumber
8 26 (0.49%) Bitbucket
9 25 (0.47%) REST Assured
10 24 (0.45%) JUnit
11 23 (0.43%) Cypress.io
12 21 (0.40%) JMeter
13 18 (0.34%) Maven
13 18 (0.34%) SonarQube
14 17 (0.32%) WebDriver
15 16 (0.30%) Mockito
15 16 (0.30%) Sonatype Nexus
16 15 (0.28%) SpecFlow
17 14 (0.26%) Zephyr
18 12 (0.23%) CircleCI
General
1 2,753 (51.93%) Social Skills
2 2,034 (38.37%) Analytical Skills
3 1,232 (23.24%) Finance
4 503 (9.49%) Public Sector
5 410 (7.73%) Banking
6 230 (4.34%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (3.47%) Retail
8 179 (3.38%) Documentation Skills
9 157 (2.96%) Legal
10 128 (2.41%) Presentation Skills
11 120 (2.26%) Influencing Skills
12 117 (2.21%) Inclusion and Diversity
13 96 (1.81%) Front Office
14 93 (1.75%) Telecoms
15 91 (1.72%) Manufacturing
16 88 (1.66%) Marketing
17 75 (1.41%) Investment Banking
18 61 (1.15%) Law
19 60 (1.13%) Back Office
20 59 (1.11%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 742 (14.00%) Analyst
2 650 (12.26%) Developer
3 464 (8.75%) Senior
4 366 (6.90%) Architect
5 336 (6.34%) Lead
6 302 (5.70%) Business Analyst
7 265 (5.00%) Consultant
8 235 (4.43%) Data Engineer
9 201 (3.79%) Project Manager
10 143 (2.70%) Support Engineer
11 129 (2.43%) IT Support
12 118 (2.23%) Data Analyst
13 113 (2.13%) Java Developer
14 100 (1.89%) IT Engineer
15 99 (1.87%) Administrator
16 98 (1.85%) Solutions Architect
17 93 (1.75%) Network Engineer
18 92 (1.74%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 92 (1.74%) Software Engineer
19 78 (1.47%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 298 (5.62%) REST
2 157 (2.96%) Kafka
3 144 (2.72%) .NET
4 139 (2.62%) RESTful
4 139 (2.62%) SOAP
5 135 (2.55%) Spring
6 131 (2.47%) React
7 116 (2.19%) CSS
8 115 (2.17%) Node.js
9 109 (2.06%) HTML
10 106 (2.00%) AngularJS
11 103 (1.94%) Spring Boot
12 100 (1.89%) LDAP
13 96 (1.81%) JSON
13 96 (1.81%) Middleware
14 90 (1.70%) XML
15 73 (1.38%) PySpark
16 70 (1.32%) OAuth
17 55 (1.04%) Oracle Fusion
18 52 (0.98%) Web Services
Miscellaneous
1 275 (5.19%) Product Ownership
2 229 (4.32%) Onboarding
3 212 (4.00%) Cloud Native
4 204 (3.85%) Data Centre
5 155 (2.92%) Self-Motivation
6 153 (2.89%) Analytical Mindset
7 150 (2.83%) Management Information System
8 116 (2.19%) Data Protection Act
9 115 (2.17%) Distributed Systems
10 111 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
11 109 (2.06%) Virtual Team
12 107 (2.02%) Data Structures
13 99 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
14 74 (1.40%) Driving Licence
15 67 (1.26%) Security Posture
16 63 (1.19%) Mobile App
17 59 (1.11%) Algorithms
18 55 (1.04%) AI Agents
18 55 (1.04%) Hybrid Cloud
19 50 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 601 (11.34%) Windows
2 313 (5.90%) Linux
3 112 (2.11%) Windows 10
4 108 (2.04%) Windows Server
5 100 (1.89%) Unix
6 94 (1.77%) Android
7 87 (1.64%) Apple iOS
8 72 (1.36%) Mac OS
9 54 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.40%) Ubuntu
10 21 (0.40%) VMS
11 16 (0.30%) CentOS
12 12 (0.23%) 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 4 (0.075%) Rocky
16 4 (0.075%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.075%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,452 (27.39%) Agile
2 898 (16.94%) CI/CD
3 805 (15.19%) DevOps
4 794 (14.98%) Continuous Improvement
5 764 (14.41%) Stakeholder Management
6 583 (11.00%) Analytics
7 582 (10.98%) Decision-Making
8 581 (10.96%) Migration
9 572 (10.79%) AI
10 457 (8.62%) Project Management
11 456 (8.60%) Data Modelling
12 443 (8.36%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 430 (8.11%) Validation
14 427 (8.06%) Customer Service
15 424 (8.00%) Business Intelligence
16 404 (7.62%) ITIL
17 399 (7.53%) Test Automation
18 368 (6.94%) Change Management
18 368 (6.94%) Scrum
19 326 (6.15%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 965 (18.20%) Python
2 915 (17.26%) SQL
3 435 (8.21%) Java
4 331 (6.24%) PowerShell
5 281 (5.30%) JavaScript
6 202 (3.81%) C#
7 169 (3.19%) TypeScript
8 125 (2.36%) Bash
9 84 (1.58%) PL/SQL
10 70 (1.32%) C++
11 58 (1.09%) Shell Script
12 52 (0.98%) Go
13 46 (0.87%) R
14 38 (0.72%) Bicep
14 38 (0.72%) C
15 36 (0.68%) Perl
15 36 (0.68%) T-SQL
16 35 (0.66%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.62%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 32 (0.60%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,155 (21.79%) Security Cleared
2 797 (15.03%) SC Cleared
3 635 (11.98%) Degree
4 212 (4.00%) Computer Science Degree
5 197 (3.72%) DV Cleared
6 169 (3.19%) BPSS Clearance
7 138 (2.60%) Cisco Certification
8 126 (2.38%) Microsoft Certification
9 97 (1.83%) CISSP
10 88 (1.66%) PMP
11 84 (1.58%) PMI Certification
12 76 (1.43%) CCNA
13 74 (1.40%) Master's Degree
14 71 (1.34%) A+ Certification
15 66 (1.25%) Azure Certification
15 66 (1.25%) Network+ Certification
16 65 (1.23%) CISM
17 60 (1.13%) MCSE
18 47 (0.89%) CCNP
19 37 (0.70%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 350 (6.60%) Data Quality
2 314 (5.92%) QA
3 159 (3.00%) GDPR
4 107 (2.02%) Accessibility
5 101 (1.91%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 93 (1.75%) PMO
7 85 (1.60%) NIST
8 74 (1.40%) SLA
9 50 (0.94%) GRC
10 35 (0.66%) WCAG
11 30 (0.57%) PCI DSS
12 29 (0.55%) Actionable Recommendations
13 28 (0.53%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 21 (0.40%) ISO 20022
15 19 (0.36%) PSD2
16 18 (0.34%) IFRS
17 14 (0.26%) HIPAA
17 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
17 14 (0.26%) NCSC
18 13 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 389 (7.34%) Active Directory
2 347 (6.55%) Docker
3 119 (2.24%) VMware Infrastructure
4 48 (0.91%) vSphere
5 40 (0.75%) VMware NSX
6 34 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 23 (0.43%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.42%) Firmware
9 19 (0.36%) VMware ESXi
10 18 (0.34%) Virtual Machines
11 13 (0.25%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) RACF
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
14 9 (0.17%) ACF2
15 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
16 6 (0.11%) IAG
17 4 (0.075%) BitLocker
17 4 (0.075%) Microsoft App-V
17 4 (0.075%) Snort
Systems Management
1 431 (8.13%) Kubernetes
2 296 (5.58%) Terraform
3 186 (3.51%) Ansible
4 124 (2.34%) Microsoft Intune
5 122 (2.30%) Grafana
6 91 (1.72%) Prometheus
7 84 (1.58%) SCCM
8 44 (0.83%) vCenter Server
9 40 (0.75%) FortiGate
10 39 (0.74%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.53%) Kibana
12 26 (0.49%) Argo
13 25 (0.47%) Puppet
14 23 (0.43%) Control-M
15 21 (0.40%) Nessus
16 17 (0.32%) IBM Guardium
17 14 (0.26%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 14 (0.26%) WSUS
18 12 (0.23%) CA Endevor
18 12 (0.23%) SCOM
Vendors
1 970 (18.30%) Microsoft
2 358 (6.75%) Oracle
3 298 (5.62%) SAP
4 234 (4.41%) ServiceNow
5 199 (3.75%) VMware
6 157 (2.96%) Databricks
7 155 (2.92%) Google
8 133 (2.51%) Cisco
9 125 (2.36%) Splunk
10 117 (2.21%) Salesforce
11 86 (1.62%) Dell
12 77 (1.45%) CyberArk
13 71 (1.34%) BeyondTrust
14 66 (1.25%) Red Hat
15 62 (1.17%) Workday
16 57 (1.08%) Adobe
17 55 (1.04%) Citrix
18 51 (0.96%) Palo Alto
19 49 (0.92%) F5
19 49 (0.92%) HP