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 27 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
27 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 6 10
Rank change year-on-year -1 +4 +11
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,294 4,600 4,721
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 13.91% 14.79% 10.63%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 15.92% 16.61% 12.17%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,283 2,689 2,952
10th Percentile £275 £250 £225
25th Percentile £400 £399 £387
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.00% - -7.06%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £619
90th Percentile £706 £688 £706
UK excluding London median daily rate £475 £465 £475
% change year-on-year +2.15% -2.11% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 287 180 345
10th Percentile £13.08 £15.61 £13.02
25th Percentile £15.62 £15.62 £14.16
Median hourly rate £18.87 £24.43 £23.50
Median % change year-on-year -22.76% +3.96% -22.31%
75th Percentile £35.84 £41.31 £59.50
90th Percentile £68.75 £66.00 £83.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £17.00 £21.46 £19.50
% change year-on-year -20.78% +10.05% -13.69%

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 33,264 27,700 38,783
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 87.38% 89.09% 87.36%
Number of daily rates quoted 21,060 16,780 25,534
10th Percentile £305 £306 £300
25th Percentile £408 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £638 £643
90th Percentile £723 £738 £738
UK excluding London median daily rate £480 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -4.00% - -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,011 875 1,974
10th Percentile £14.50 £15.62 £13.50
25th Percentile £17.69 £21.00 £16.88
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £36.00
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% -9.72% +12.50%
75th Percentile £57.50 £62.50 £62.50
90th Percentile £70.00 £75.00 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £24.71 £30.43 £37.50
% change year-on-year -18.80% -18.85% +44.23%

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 27 January 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 27 January 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 27 January 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 4,560 £500 - 4,344
UK excluding London -3 2,643 £475 +2.15% 4,048
London -2 2,085 £523 -1.32% 881
Work from Home +2 1,541 £491 -1.80% 1,737
North of England -3 705 £450 -5.26% 801
South East -2 631 £475 -5.00% 1,326
Midlands -2 501 £461 +8.53% 623
North West -4 365 £425 -8.11% 380
West Midlands 0 354 £500 +14.94% 319
South West -2 293 £525 +10.53% 531
Yorkshire -4 285 £487 -2.60% 309
Scotland +1 255 £450 +2.27% 156
East of England -4 208 £475 +4.63% 531
East Midlands -3 148 £402 +9.76% 299
North East -4 62 £450 -15.29% 121
Wales -3 54 £400 -1.54% 150
Northern Ireland +1 39 £475 +11.76% 66
Channel Islands -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
1 201 (3.80%) Confluence
2 166 (3.14%) SharePoint
3 112 (2.12%) Microsoft Exchange
4 75 (1.42%) Apache Spark
5 65 (1.23%) SAS
6 61 (1.15%) Apache
7 44 (0.83%) Apache Airflow
8 34 (0.64%) CMS
9 29 (0.55%) Skype for Business
10 16 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 12 (0.23%) JBoss
12 10 (0.19%) nginx
13 9 (0.17%) Jupyter
14 8 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
14 8 (0.15%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.13%) Camunda
15 7 (0.13%) Exchange Server 2013
15 7 (0.13%) Oracle SOA Suite
16 6 (0.11%) Mattermost
16 6 (0.11%) OpenStack
Applications
1 317 (5.99%) Microsoft Excel
2 212 (4.00%) Microsoft Office
3 122 (2.30%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 76 (1.44%) MS Visio
5 73 (1.38%) Microsoft Project
6 18 (0.34%) Spreadsheet
7 16 (0.30%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.19%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) Adobe Creative Suite
11 5 (0.094%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.094%) Trello
12 4 (0.076%) Adobe Captivate
12 4 (0.076%) Autodesk Inventor
12 4 (0.076%) InVision
12 4 (0.076%) ProjectWise
12 4 (0.076%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.057%) LaTeX
13 3 (0.057%) Notion
14 2 (0.038%) AutoCAD
Business Applications
1 104 (1.96%) SAP S/4HANA
2 43 (0.81%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Payment Gateway
4 20 (0.38%) Oracle Payables
5 19 (0.36%) SAP EWM
6 15 (0.28%) NetSuite
7 14 (0.26%) Aladdin
7 14 (0.26%) Oracle EBS
7 14 (0.26%) Oracle Receivables
7 14 (0.26%) Remedy ITSM
7 14 (0.26%) SAP WM
7 14 (0.26%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
8 13 (0.25%) Oracle Assets
8 13 (0.25%) Oracle ERP
8 13 (0.25%) SAP EHS
8 13 (0.25%) SAP ERP
9 12 (0.23%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
10 11 (0.21%) Oracle General Ledger
10 11 (0.21%) SAP HR
10 11 (0.21%) SAP SD
Cloud Services
1 1,166 (22.02%) Azure
2 838 (15.83%) AWS
3 416 (7.86%) GCP
4 352 (6.65%) Power Platform
5 339 (6.40%) Microsoft 365
6 253 (4.78%) GitHub
7 234 (4.42%) Azure DevOps
8 185 (3.49%) Serverless
9 144 (2.72%) Entra ID
10 137 (2.59%) SaaS
11 133 (2.51%) GitHub Actions
12 95 (1.79%) Snowflake
13 89 (1.68%) Amazon S3
13 89 (1.68%) AWS Lambda
14 84 (1.59%) Dynamics 365
15 79 (1.49%) Power Automate
16 73 (1.38%) PaaS
17 71 (1.34%) Azure Data Factory
18 68 (1.28%) OpenShift
19 67 (1.27%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 191 (3.61%) Firewall
2 167 (3.15%) DNS
3 115 (2.17%) Network Security
4 114 (2.15%) TCP/IP
5 108 (2.04%) VPN
6 92 (1.74%) DHCP
7 89 (1.68%) WAN
8 67 (1.27%) LAN
9 41 (0.77%) VLAN
10 39 (0.74%) Wi-Fi
11 36 (0.68%) BGP
12 30 (0.57%) VoIP
13 29 (0.55%) Skype
14 28 (0.53%) Wireless
15 27 (0.51%) SSH
16 25 (0.47%) HTTP
16 25 (0.47%) SD-WAN
17 24 (0.45%) SAN
17 24 (0.45%) SSL
18 23 (0.43%) Internet
Database & Business Intelligence
1 279 (5.27%) Power BI
2 179 (3.38%) Relational Database
3 161 (3.04%) SQL Server
4 156 (2.95%) Data Warehouse
5 154 (2.91%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (2.06%) NoSQL
7 98 (1.85%) MongoDB
8 89 (1.68%) MySQL
9 80 (1.51%) Metadata
10 77 (1.45%) Tableau
11 71 (1.34%) Oracle Database
12 65 (1.23%) Big Data
13 53 (1.00%) Data Lake
14 48 (0.91%) Oracle Reports
15 44 (0.83%) Amazon RDS
16 43 (0.81%) DynamoDB
17 39 (0.74%) Pentaho
17 39 (0.74%) RDBMS
18 38 (0.72%) Elasticsearch
18 38 (0.72%) Hadoop
Development Applications
1 465 (8.78%) JIRA
2 373 (7.05%) Git
3 267 (5.04%) Jenkins
4 171 (3.23%) GitLab
5 79 (1.49%) Selenium
6 73 (1.38%) JUnit
7 41 (0.77%) Postman
8 39 (0.74%) Cucumber
9 33 (0.62%) Bitbucket
10 32 (0.60%) Maven
11 28 (0.53%) SonarQube
12 22 (0.42%) JMeter
12 22 (0.42%) Sonatype Nexus
13 21 (0.40%) REST Assured
14 20 (0.38%) Cypress.io
15 18 (0.34%) Mockito
16 16 (0.30%) CircleCI
16 16 (0.30%) SpecFlow
17 15 (0.28%) Artifactory
18 14 (0.26%) Gradle
General
1 2,938 (55.50%) Social Skills
2 1,905 (35.98%) Analytical Skills
3 1,200 (22.67%) Finance
4 503 (9.50%) Public Sector
5 445 (8.41%) Banking
6 207 (3.91%) Organisational Skills
7 159 (3.00%) Legal
8 150 (2.83%) Documentation Skills
9 139 (2.63%) Influencing Skills
10 130 (2.46%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 129 (2.44%) Presentation Skills
12 124 (2.34%) Telecoms
13 115 (2.17%) Retail
14 107 (2.02%) Front Office
15 105 (1.98%) Marketing
16 102 (1.93%) Investment Banking
17 98 (1.85%) Manufacturing
18 55 (1.04%) Military
19 53 (1.00%) Financial Institution
20 43 (0.81%) Law
Job Titles
1 804 (15.19%) Developer
2 739 (13.96%) Analyst
3 469 (8.86%) Senior
4 335 (6.33%) Architect
5 321 (6.06%) Consultant
6 317 (5.99%) Lead
7 294 (5.55%) Business Analyst
8 201 (3.80%) Project Manager
9 171 (3.23%) Data Engineer
10 160 (3.02%) Support Engineer
11 139 (2.63%) Java Developer
12 131 (2.47%) IT Support
13 121 (2.29%) Senior Developer
14 104 (1.96%) Data Analyst
15 101 (1.91%) Software Engineer
16 95 (1.79%) Support Analyst
17 88 (1.66%) Solutions Architect
18 87 (1.64%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 82 (1.55%) IT Analyst
20 80 (1.51%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 370 (6.99%) REST
2 204 (3.85%) RESTful
3 187 (3.53%) SOAP
4 182 (3.44%) .NET
5 177 (3.34%) Kafka
6 168 (3.17%) Node.js
7 164 (3.10%) React
8 162 (3.06%) Spring
9 141 (2.66%) HTML
10 124 (2.34%) AngularJS
11 120 (2.27%) CSS
12 118 (2.23%) Spring Boot
13 96 (1.81%) JSON
14 91 (1.72%) XML
15 86 (1.62%) Middleware
16 84 (1.59%) LDAP
17 77 (1.45%) OAuth
18 71 (1.34%) Oracle Fusion
19 58 (1.10%) Web Services
20 55 (1.04%) PySpark
Miscellaneous
1 268 (5.06%) Product Ownership
2 237 (4.48%) Cloud Native
3 202 (3.82%) Management Information System
4 188 (3.55%) Onboarding
5 136 (2.57%) Analytical Mindset
6 125 (2.36%) Data Structures
7 118 (2.23%) Data Centre
8 116 (2.19%) Self-Motivation
9 113 (2.13%) Enterprise Software
10 101 (1.91%) Data Protection Act
11 94 (1.78%) Security Posture
12 90 (1.70%) Virtual Team
13 86 (1.62%) Distributed Systems
14 84 (1.59%) Legacy Systems
15 82 (1.55%) Algorithms
16 76 (1.44%) CMDB
17 65 (1.23%) Mobile App
18 60 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
19 59 (1.11%) NHS
20 58 (1.10%) Equities
Operating Systems
1 526 (9.94%) Windows
2 372 (7.03%) Linux
3 117 (2.21%) Unix
4 108 (2.04%) Windows 10
5 106 (2.00%) Windows Server
6 58 (1.10%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 56 (1.06%) Apple iOS
8 51 (0.96%) Android
9 49 (0.93%) Mac OS
10 23 (0.43%) VMS
11 18 (0.34%) CentOS
12 13 (0.25%) Ubuntu
13 9 (0.17%) Windows Server 2012
14 7 (0.13%) Windows Server 2019
15 6 (0.11%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 5 (0.094%) Windows Server 2003
17 4 (0.076%) Windows 8
18 3 (0.057%) Debian
18 3 (0.057%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,605 (30.32%) Agile
2 989 (18.68%) CI/CD
3 851 (16.07%) DevOps
4 764 (14.43%) Stakeholder Management
5 727 (13.73%) Continuous Improvement
6 572 (10.80%) Analytics
7 520 (9.82%) Migration
8 493 (9.31%) Decision-Making
9 484 (9.14%) Project Management
10 454 (8.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
11 439 (8.29%) AI
12 436 (8.24%) Test Automation
13 423 (7.99%) Scrum
14 406 (7.67%) Data Modelling
15 382 (7.22%) Business Intelligence
16 381 (7.20%) Computer Science
17 371 (7.01%) ITIL
18 368 (6.95%) Mentoring
19 366 (6.91%) Containerisation
20 361 (6.82%) Microservices
Programming Languages
1 1,055 (19.93%) Python
2 900 (17.00%) SQL
3 522 (9.86%) Java
4 353 (6.67%) PowerShell
5 326 (6.16%) JavaScript
6 229 (4.33%) C#
7 215 (4.06%) TypeScript
8 146 (2.76%) Bash
9 92 (1.74%) Shell Script
10 82 (1.55%) Go
11 68 (1.28%) PL/SQL
12 61 (1.15%) C++
13 47 (0.89%) Perl
13 47 (0.89%) Scala
14 42 (0.79%) VBA
15 39 (0.74%) R
16 38 (0.72%) Ruby
17 33 (0.62%) T-SQL
18 32 (0.60%) Apex Code
19 31 (0.59%) PHP
Qualifications
1 1,044 (19.72%) Security Cleared
2 760 (14.36%) SC Cleared
3 724 (13.68%) Degree
4 266 (5.02%) Computer Science Degree
5 166 (3.14%) DV Cleared
6 132 (2.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 102 (1.93%) PMI Certification
8 99 (1.87%) CISSP
8 99 (1.87%) Master's Degree
8 99 (1.87%) Microsoft Certification
9 95 (1.79%) PMP
10 88 (1.66%) Azure Certification
11 78 (1.47%) Cisco Certification
12 60 (1.13%) AWS Certification
13 52 (0.98%) CISM
14 50 (0.94%) CCNP
15 42 (0.79%) A+ Certification
16 37 (0.70%) CCNA
16 37 (0.70%) ITIL Certification
17 32 (0.60%) MCP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 359 (6.78%) QA
2 288 (5.44%) Data Quality
3 169 (3.19%) GDPR
4 115 (2.17%) Accessibility
5 85 (1.61%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 81 (1.53%) NIST
7 78 (1.47%) PMO
8 51 (0.96%) SLA
9 43 (0.81%) PCI DSS
10 33 (0.62%) GRC
11 31 (0.59%) WCAG
12 27 (0.51%) PSD2
13 25 (0.47%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 20 (0.38%) ISO 20022
15 19 (0.36%) Actionable Recommendations
16 16 (0.30%) EU AI Act
16 16 (0.30%) HIPAA
17 15 (0.28%) SEPA
18 14 (0.26%) ISO 8583
19 13 (0.25%) IFRS
System Software
1 492 (9.29%) Docker
2 360 (6.80%) Active Directory
3 116 (2.19%) VMware Infrastructure
4 45 (0.85%) Hyper-V
5 33 (0.62%) vSphere
6 25 (0.47%) VMware NSX
7 22 (0.42%) Virtual Machines
8 21 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
9 19 (0.36%) Firmware
10 11 (0.21%) RACF
11 10 (0.19%) HDFS
11 10 (0.19%) Time Sharing Option
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) Squid
15 5 (0.094%) KVM
15 5 (0.094%) VMware ESXi
16 4 (0.076%) vCloud
17 3 (0.057%) BitLocker
17 3 (0.057%) Slurm Workload Manager
Systems Management
1 518 (9.78%) Kubernetes
2 303 (5.72%) Terraform
3 202 (3.82%) Ansible
4 121 (2.29%) Grafana
5 103 (1.95%) Microsoft Intune
6 98 (1.85%) SCCM
7 94 (1.78%) Prometheus
8 47 (0.89%) Single Sign-On
9 44 (0.83%) Puppet
10 37 (0.70%) Kibana
11 25 (0.47%) Argo
11 25 (0.47%) Nessus
12 22 (0.42%) Active Directory Federation Services
13 19 (0.36%) FortiGate
14 17 (0.32%) vCenter Server
15 16 (0.30%) Red Hat Satellite
15 16 (0.30%) SCOM
15 16 (0.30%) vRealize
16 15 (0.28%) Control-M
17 14 (0.26%) IBM Guardium
Vendors
1 1,011 (19.10%) Microsoft
2 361 (6.82%) Oracle
3 275 (5.19%) SAP
4 229 (4.33%) ServiceNow
5 195 (3.68%) VMware
6 175 (3.31%) Google
7 145 (2.74%) Databricks
7 145 (2.74%) Splunk
8 131 (2.47%) Salesforce
9 124 (2.34%) Cisco
10 79 (1.49%) CyberArk
11 73 (1.38%) Red Hat
12 67 (1.27%) BeyondTrust
13 55 (1.04%) Palo Alto
14 54 (1.02%) IBM
15 48 (0.91%) Talend
16 46 (0.87%) Workday
17 45 (0.85%) HP
18 44 (0.83%) Dell
19 42 (0.79%) Adobe