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 4 September 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
4 Sep 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -7 +4 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,629 5,066 4,491
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.49% 15.68% 11.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.40% 17.34% 13.80%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,168 3,029 2,676
10th Percentile £246 £237 £259
25th Percentile £375 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £480 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.17% -4.00% -2.53%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £603
90th Percentile £710 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 501 316 243
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.82 £12.30
25th Percentile £14.45 £15.25 £14.92
Median hourly rate £18.79 £20.26 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.23% +24.80% -69.76%
75th Percentile £39.00 £35.24 £29.00
90th Percentile £73.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.25 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -3.03% +15.96% -70.25%

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 45,398 29,222 32,553
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.63% 90.44% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,773 18,158 20,413
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £425 £402 £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 2,911 1,744 1,558
10th Percentile £14.00 £14.20 £14.41
25th Percentile £17.72 £17.30 £20.00
Median hourly rate £41.00 £25.15 £42.50
Median % change year-on-year +63.02% -40.82% +2.41%
75th Percentile £67.84 £46.01 £65.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £67.18 £75.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £42.50 £22.63 £43.00
% change year-on-year +87.80% -47.37% +12.13%

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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4 September 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 4,877 £500 +2.04% 9,904
UK excluding London -4 2,968 £450 - 6,435
London -12 2,142 £525 +5.00% 4,897
Work from Home -6 1,541 £500 - 3,789
South East -4 781 £475 +5.56% 1,431
North of England -12 713 £443 -6.74% 1,418
Midlands -6 551 £450 +1.12% 1,024
West Midlands -8 393 £450 -4.05% 647
North West -8 359 £444 -6.63% 791
South West -3 331 £483 +7.22% 867
Yorkshire -9 290 £450 -5.26% 441
Scotland -4 281 £438 -2.78% 553
East of England +1 253 £438 -12.50% 712
East Midlands -1 155 £475 +26.67% 379
North East -12 66 £375 -16.67% 212
Wales -7 60 £475 +26.67% 162
Northern Ireland -5 25 £413 -13.16% 397
Channel Islands -2 3 £525 - 4

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
1 231 (4.10%) SharePoint
2 228 (4.05%) Confluence
3 109 (1.94%) Microsoft Exchange
4 58 (1.03%) Apache Spark
5 45 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 40 (0.71%) Apache
7 34 (0.60%) Oracle Workflow
8 28 (0.50%) CMS
8 28 (0.50%) SAS
9 13 (0.23%) WebLogic
9 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
10 11 (0.20%) Jupyter
11 9 (0.16%) CICS
12 8 (0.14%) ArcGIS
12 8 (0.14%) IIS
12 8 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 7 (0.12%) Appian
13 7 (0.12%) Mule
14 6 (0.11%) Anypoint
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 319 (5.67%) Microsoft Excel
2 262 (4.65%) Microsoft Office
3 124 (2.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 68 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
5 66 (1.17%) MS Visio
6 32 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 26 (0.46%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 18 (0.32%) Chatbot
9 17 (0.30%) AutoCAD
10 15 (0.27%) Sketch
11 13 (0.23%) Revit
12 11 (0.20%) Trello
13 10 (0.18%) CATIA
14 7 (0.12%) CPLEX
15 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
15 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 6 (0.11%) Windchill
16 5 (0.089%) Navisworks
17 4 (0.071%) Adobe XD
18 3 (0.053%) DaVinci Resolve
Business Applications
1 140 (2.49%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.85%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.69%) Oracle EBS
4 30 (0.53%) NetSuite
5 29 (0.52%) SAP GRC
6 25 (0.44%) Remedy ITSM
6 25 (0.44%) Workday HCM
7 15 (0.27%) iTrent
7 15 (0.27%) Salesforce CRM
8 13 (0.23%) SAP SD
9 12 (0.21%) Oracle Payables
9 12 (0.21%) Teamcenter
10 11 (0.20%) Finacle
10 11 (0.20%) Oracle ERP
11 10 (0.18%) Aladdin
11 10 (0.18%) SAP CRM
12 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.16%) SAP HCM
13 8 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
13 8 (0.14%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,116 (19.83%) Azure
2 813 (14.44%) AWS
3 505 (8.97%) Microsoft 365
4 446 (7.92%) Power Platform
5 316 (5.61%) GCP
6 281 (4.99%) Azure DevOps
7 238 (4.23%) Entra ID
8 194 (3.45%) GitHub
9 155 (2.75%) SaaS
10 120 (2.13%) Serverless
11 106 (1.88%) Power Automate
12 89 (1.58%) GitHub Actions
13 85 (1.51%) Dynamics 365
13 85 (1.51%) Microsoft Copilot
14 79 (1.40%) OneDrive
14 79 (1.40%) PowerApps
15 68 (1.21%) Snowflake
16 65 (1.15%) Azure Data Factory
17 64 (1.14%) Amazon S3
18 63 (1.12%) AWS Lambda
Communications & Networking
1 222 (3.94%) DNS
2 190 (3.38%) Firewall
3 166 (2.95%) VPN
4 135 (2.40%) DHCP
5 133 (2.36%) TCP/IP
6 128 (2.27%) WAN
7 104 (1.85%) LAN
8 103 (1.83%) Network Security
9 81 (1.44%) Wi-Fi
10 72 (1.28%) SAN
11 61 (1.08%) Wireless
12 53 (0.94%) VLAN
13 48 (0.85%) BGP
14 40 (0.71%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.64%) VoIP
16 35 (0.62%) MPLS
17 32 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
18 27 (0.48%) OSPF
19 26 (0.46%) HTTP
20 25 (0.44%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 340 (6.04%) Power BI
2 217 (3.86%) SQL Server
3 195 (3.46%) Relational Database
4 175 (3.11%) Data Warehouse
5 161 (2.86%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (1.94%) Metadata
7 96 (1.71%) MongoDB
8 87 (1.55%) NoSQL
9 86 (1.53%) Tableau
10 78 (1.39%) Data Lake
11 62 (1.10%) Oracle Database
12 59 (1.05%) MySQL
13 54 (0.96%) Big Data
14 46 (0.82%) Oracle Reports
15 37 (0.66%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 35 (0.62%) Db2
17 30 (0.53%) Power Query
18 25 (0.44%) Amazon RDS
18 25 (0.44%) DynamoDB
19 24 (0.43%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 486 (8.63%) JIRA
2 357 (6.34%) Git
3 180 (3.20%) Jenkins
4 134 (2.38%) GitLab
5 75 (1.33%) Selenium
6 42 (0.75%) Cypress.io
6 42 (0.75%) Maven
7 41 (0.73%) Gradle
8 40 (0.71%) Postman
9 32 (0.57%) JUnit
10 29 (0.52%) Cucumber
11 28 (0.50%) Bitbucket
11 28 (0.50%) REST Assured
12 22 (0.39%) JMeter
13 21 (0.37%) SonarQube
14 20 (0.36%) Mockito
14 20 (0.36%) Oracle Forms
15 16 (0.28%) Gatling
15 16 (0.28%) WebDriver
16 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
General
1 3,023 (53.70%) Social Skills
2 2,396 (42.57%) Analytical Skills
3 1,303 (23.15%) Finance
4 596 (10.59%) Public Sector
5 448 (7.96%) Banking
6 262 (4.65%) Organisational Skills
7 203 (3.61%) Documentation Skills
8 198 (3.52%) Manufacturing
9 188 (3.34%) Retail
10 178 (3.16%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 164 (2.91%) Influencing Skills
12 144 (2.56%) Legal
13 126 (2.24%) Front Office
14 121 (2.15%) Presentation Skills
15 117 (2.08%) Telecoms
16 113 (2.01%) Marketing
17 95 (1.69%) Investment Banking
18 82 (1.46%) Back Office
19 69 (1.23%) Law
20 65 (1.15%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 730 (12.97%) Analyst
2 710 (12.61%) Developer
3 517 (9.18%) Senior
4 420 (7.46%) Lead
5 345 (6.13%) Architect
6 266 (4.73%) Consultant
7 244 (4.33%) Business Analyst
8 225 (4.00%) IT Support
9 217 (3.86%) Support Engineer
10 211 (3.75%) Data Engineer
11 157 (2.79%) Project Manager
12 153 (2.72%) IT Engineer
13 141 (2.50%) Administrator
14 132 (2.34%) Java Developer
15 119 (2.11%) Data Analyst
16 113 (2.01%) Infrastructure Engineer
17 106 (1.88%) Solutions Architect
18 103 (1.83%) DevOps Engineer
19 102 (1.81%) IT Support Engineer
20 100 (1.78%) Network Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 387 (6.88%) REST
2 326 (5.79%) Terraform
3 185 (3.29%) RESTful
4 182 (3.23%) .NET
5 169 (3.00%) SOAP
6 154 (2.74%) React
7 144 (2.56%) Kafka
8 143 (2.54%) Spring
9 133 (2.36%) XML
10 131 (2.33%) JSON
11 126 (2.24%) HTML
12 124 (2.20%) CSS
13 118 (2.10%) Spring Boot
14 117 (2.08%) Middleware
15 112 (1.99%) Web Services
16 93 (1.65%) Node.js
17 90 (1.60%) AngularJS
18 86 (1.53%) OAuth
19 73 (1.30%) PySpark
20 57 (1.01%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 318 (5.65%) Onboarding
2 283 (5.03%) Product Ownership
3 270 (4.80%) Cloud Native
4 218 (3.87%) Self-Motivation
5 198 (3.52%) Enterprise Software
6 184 (3.27%) Management Information System
7 183 (3.25%) Data Centre
8 168 (2.98%) Distributed Systems
9 146 (2.59%) Data Structures
10 140 (2.49%) Analytical Mindset
11 130 (2.31%) Legacy Systems
12 126 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
13 90 (1.60%) Virtual Team
14 84 (1.49%) Driving Licence
15 78 (1.39%) AI Agents
16 73 (1.30%) CMDB
17 64 (1.14%) Algorithms
18 62 (1.10%) Mobile App
19 55 (0.98%) Derivative
19 55 (0.98%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
Operating Systems
1 758 (13.47%) Windows
2 319 (5.67%) Linux
3 211 (3.75%) Windows Server
4 140 (2.49%) Windows 10
5 107 (1.90%) Unix
6 92 (1.63%) Apple iOS
7 91 (1.62%) Android
8 84 (1.49%) Mac OS
9 48 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 22 (0.39%) Ubuntu
11 17 (0.30%) VMS
11 17 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.20%) zOS
13 9 (0.16%) CentOS
13 9 (0.16%) Windows Server 2016
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
14 8 (0.14%) Windows Server 2012
15 6 (0.11%) Embedded Linux
15 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.071%) AIX
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,566 (27.82%) Agile
2 1,224 (21.74%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,218 (21.64%) Stakeholder Management
4 939 (16.68%) CI/CD
5 874 (15.53%) DevOps
6 741 (13.16%) AI
7 632 (11.23%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 621 (11.03%) Decision-Making
9 580 (10.30%) Analytics
10 575 (10.21%) Migration
11 553 (9.82%) Customer Service
12 525 (9.33%) ITIL
13 458 (8.14%) Validation
14 448 (7.96%) Test Automation
15 424 (7.53%) Data Modelling
16 418 (7.43%) Business Intelligence
17 417 (7.41%) Scrum
18 378 (6.72%) ITSM
19 361 (6.41%) Roadmaps
20 357 (6.34%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 996 (17.69%) SQL
2 899 (15.97%) Python
3 441 (7.83%) Java
4 336 (5.97%) PowerShell
5 331 (5.88%) JavaScript
6 208 (3.70%) C#
7 158 (2.81%) Bash
8 127 (2.26%) TypeScript
9 98 (1.74%) PL/SQL
10 71 (1.26%) C++
11 51 (0.91%) T-SQL
12 39 (0.69%) Go
12 39 (0.69%) Shell Script
13 37 (0.66%) Scala
14 36 (0.64%) Kotlin
15 34 (0.60%) Bicep
16 32 (0.57%) Apex Code
16 32 (0.57%) R
17 30 (0.53%) C
18 28 (0.50%) Data Analysis Expressions
Qualifications
1 1,229 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 873 (15.51%) SC Cleared
3 645 (11.46%) Degree
4 211 (3.75%) DV Cleared
5 201 (3.57%) Computer Science Degree
6 163 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 159 (2.82%) Microsoft Certification
8 108 (1.92%) Cisco Certification
9 84 (1.49%) Azure Certification
10 77 (1.37%) PMP
11 75 (1.33%) A+ Certification
11 75 (1.33%) CISSP
11 75 (1.33%) PMI Certification
12 64 (1.14%) CCNA
13 55 (0.98%) Master's Degree
14 50 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
15 48 (0.85%) AWS Certification
16 44 (0.78%) MCSE
17 43 (0.76%) CISM
18 42 (0.75%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 417 (7.41%) Data Quality
2 380 (6.75%) QA
3 144 (2.56%) Accessibility
4 130 (2.31%) GDPR
5 129 (2.29%) SLA
6 99 (1.76%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 95 (1.69%) PMO
8 76 (1.35%) GRC
9 75 (1.33%) NIST
10 36 (0.64%) WCAG
11 25 (0.44%) GxP
11 25 (0.44%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 21 (0.37%) Actionable Recommendations
13 19 (0.34%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 18 (0.32%) Cyber Essentials
15 16 (0.28%) PCI DSS
16 15 (0.27%) COBIT
16 15 (0.27%) ISO 20022
17 14 (0.25%) NCSC
18 13 (0.23%) GMP
System Software
1 453 (8.05%) Active Directory
2 350 (6.22%) Docker
3 164 (2.91%) VMware Infrastructure
4 70 (1.24%) Hyper-V
5 64 (1.14%) VMware ESXi
6 55 (0.98%) VMware NSX
7 51 (0.91%) vSphere
8 38 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
9 29 (0.52%) Virtual Machines
10 27 (0.48%) vCloud
11 26 (0.46%) IAG
12 15 (0.27%) Firmware
13 8 (0.14%) Virtual Servers
14 7 (0.12%) Oracle RAC
15 6 (0.11%) NFS
16 5 (0.089%) Microsoft App-V
17 3 (0.053%) Citrix Hypervisor
17 3 (0.053%) Microsoft Virtual Server
17 3 (0.053%) Squid
17 3 (0.053%) XenApp
Systems Management
1 392 (6.96%) Kubernetes
2 168 (2.98%) Ansible
3 134 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
4 101 (1.79%) SCCM
5 98 (1.74%) Grafana
6 75 (1.33%) Prometheus
7 56 (0.99%) vCenter Server
8 42 (0.75%) SCOM
9 30 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
10 22 (0.39%) Control-M
10 22 (0.39%) Jamf Pro
10 22 (0.39%) WSUS
11 15 (0.27%) FortiGate
12 14 (0.25%) Argo
13 12 (0.21%) Kibana
13 12 (0.21%) NetBackup
14 11 (0.20%) Istio
15 10 (0.18%) Nessus
15 10 (0.18%) Puppet
16 9 (0.16%) Progress Chef
Vendors
1 1,275 (22.65%) Microsoft
2 422 (7.50%) Oracle
3 368 (6.54%) ServiceNow
4 355 (6.31%) SAP
5 216 (3.84%) VMware
6 162 (2.88%) Google
7 156 (2.77%) Salesforce
8 130 (2.31%) Databricks
9 128 (2.27%) Cisco
10 114 (2.03%) Splunk
11 81 (1.44%) Workday
12 69 (1.23%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.21%) Adobe
14 65 (1.15%) Apple
15 56 (0.99%) IBM
16 55 (0.98%) MuleSoft
17 54 (0.96%) CyberArk
18 50 (0.89%) Dell
19 44 (0.78%) Red Hat
20 42 (0.75%) Citrix