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 30 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

 6 months to
30 Jul 2026		 Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,548 5,289 4,429
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.47% 16.12% 11.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.33% 17.82% 13.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,171 3,228 2,743
10th Percentile £250 £250 £250
25th Percentile £380 £375 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +1.03% -3.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £615
90th Percentile £700 £700 £718
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £455 £475
% change year-on-year -0.99% -4.32% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 463 312 302
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.00 £15.44 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.33 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -8.99% +30.87% -69.58%
75th Percentile £40.75 £38.42 £31.21
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.00 £18.85 £16.00
% change year-on-year +0.80% +17.81% -70.19%

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 45,002 29,684 34,056
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.46% 85.49%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,855 18,648 21,888
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.11%
75th Percentile £625 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £734 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,714 1,621 1,980
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £13.69
25th Percentile £19.89 £17.33 £17.74
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.75 £74.00
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.57 £40.33
% change year-on-year +86.55% -41.56% -

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 30 July 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 30 July 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the UK

Problem-Solving
Top 17 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 30 July 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 4,800 £495 +0.61% 3,869
UK excluding London -3 2,973 £450 -0.99% 2,924
London -13 2,054 £520 +4.00% 1,453
Work from Home -6 1,552 £492 -1.60% 1,390
South East -4 768 £481 -2.34% 872
North of England -9 735 £450 -5.26% 733
Midlands -6 539 £450 +5.88% 504
West Midlands -9 394 £450 - 295
North West -11 351 £450 -7.12% 356
South West 0 340 £500 +5.26% 372
Yorkshire -7 330 £450 -5.26% 265
Scotland -3 279 £438 -2.78% 119
East of England -1 257 £450 -3.74% 297
East Midlands 0 143 £473 +27.19% 209
Wales -4 62 £475 +26.67% 72
North East -16 59 £370 -17.78% 123
Northern Ireland -6 24 £380 -23.39% 58

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
1 234 (4.22%) Confluence
2 200 (3.60%) SharePoint
3 98 (1.77%) Microsoft Exchange
4 69 (1.24%) Apache Spark
5 44 (0.79%) Apache
5 44 (0.79%) Apache Airflow
6 39 (0.70%) SAS
7 32 (0.58%) Oracle Workflow
8 31 (0.56%) CMS
9 19 (0.34%) WebLogic
10 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
11 11 (0.20%) CICS
12 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.14%) Adobe Experience Manager
15 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
15 7 (0.13%) Mule
16 6 (0.11%) Appian
16 6 (0.11%) nginx
16 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
Applications
1 291 (5.25%) Microsoft Excel
2 252 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 98 (1.77%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.46%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.21%) Microsoft Project
6 33 (0.59%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.49%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 25 (0.45%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.27%) Sketch
10 14 (0.25%) AutoCAD
11 11 (0.20%) Revit
12 10 (0.18%) CATIA
12 10 (0.18%) Trello
13 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
14 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
14 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
15 5 (0.090%) Photoshop
16 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
16 4 (0.072%) Maya
17 3 (0.054%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 142 (2.56%) SAP S/4HANA
2 48 (0.87%) Dynamics CRM
3 39 (0.70%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.47%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
6 22 (0.40%) Workday HCM
7 21 (0.38%) SAP GRC
8 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
9 14 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 13 (0.23%) iTrent
11 12 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
11 12 (0.22%) SAP HCM
12 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
13 10 (0.18%) Finacle
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
14 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
14 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
14 9 (0.16%) SAP CRM
14 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,063 (19.16%) Azure
2 812 (14.64%) AWS
3 425 (7.66%) Microsoft 365
4 421 (7.59%) Power Platform
5 317 (5.71%) GCP
6 254 (4.58%) Azure DevOps
7 209 (3.77%) Entra ID
8 199 (3.59%) GitHub
9 149 (2.69%) SaaS
10 129 (2.33%) Serverless
11 101 (1.82%) GitHub Actions
12 85 (1.53%) Power Automate
13 79 (1.42%) Amazon S3
14 78 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
15 76 (1.37%) AWS Lambda
16 68 (1.23%) PowerApps
17 66 (1.19%) OpenShift
18 62 (1.12%) Azure Data Factory
19 61 (1.10%) Snowflake
20 60 (1.08%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 228 (4.11%) DNS
2 193 (3.48%) Firewall
3 147 (2.65%) VPN
4 137 (2.47%) TCP/IP
5 136 (2.45%) DHCP
6 119 (2.14%) WAN
7 101 (1.82%) LAN
8 94 (1.69%) Network Security
9 83 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
10 82 (1.48%) SAN
11 64 (1.15%) VLAN
12 55 (0.99%) Wireless
13 52 (0.94%) BGP
14 39 (0.70%) OSPF
14 39 (0.70%) SD-WAN
15 38 (0.68%) VoIP
16 32 (0.58%) MPLS
17 31 (0.56%) Structured Cabling
18 27 (0.49%) HTTP
19 26 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (5.93%) Power BI
2 229 (4.13%) SQL Server
3 169 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 168 (3.03%) Relational Database
5 161 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
6 123 (2.22%) MongoDB
7 99 (1.78%) Metadata
8 91 (1.64%) NoSQL
9 88 (1.59%) Data Lake
10 87 (1.57%) Tableau
11 68 (1.23%) Big Data
12 62 (1.12%) MySQL
13 53 (0.96%) Oracle Database
14 49 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
15 46 (0.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.65%) Db2
17 28 (0.50%) DynamoDB
18 27 (0.49%) Hadoop
19 26 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
19 26 (0.47%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 507 (9.14%) JIRA
2 336 (6.06%) Git
3 192 (3.46%) Jenkins
4 126 (2.27%) GitLab
5 75 (1.35%) Selenium
6 40 (0.72%) Postman
7 39 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 35 (0.63%) REST Assured
9 33 (0.59%) Gradle
10 32 (0.58%) Maven
11 31 (0.56%) Cucumber
12 26 (0.47%) Bitbucket
12 26 (0.47%) JUnit
13 21 (0.38%) Mockito
14 19 (0.34%) JMeter
14 19 (0.34%) WebDriver
15 18 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 14 (0.25%) Gatling
17 14 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,870 (51.73%) Social Skills
2 2,278 (41.06%) Analytical Skills
3 1,307 (23.56%) Finance
4 572 (10.31%) Public Sector
5 428 (7.71%) Banking
6 226 (4.07%) Organisational Skills
7 202 (3.64%) Retail
8 198 (3.57%) Documentation Skills
9 172 (3.10%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 153 (2.76%) Manufacturing
11 148 (2.67%) Legal
12 143 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
13 115 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
14 114 (2.05%) Front Office
15 113 (2.04%) Marketing
16 106 (1.91%) Telecoms
17 87 (1.57%) Investment Banking
18 82 (1.48%) Back Office
19 62 (1.12%) Aerospace
20 59 (1.06%) Law
Job Titles
1 738 (13.30%) Analyst
2 693 (12.49%) Developer
3 510 (9.19%) Senior
4 418 (7.53%) Lead
5 369 (6.65%) Architect
6 263 (4.74%) Business Analyst
7 257 (4.63%) Consultant
8 230 (4.15%) Data Engineer
9 196 (3.53%) IT Support
10 191 (3.44%) Support Engineer
11 172 (3.10%) Project Manager
12 140 (2.52%) Java Developer
13 130 (2.34%) Administrator
13 130 (2.34%) IT Engineer
14 117 (2.11%) Data Analyst
15 107 (1.93%) Solutions Architect
16 102 (1.84%) Software Engineer
17 99 (1.78%) Network Engineer
18 94 (1.69%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 91 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 348 (6.27%) REST
2 166 (2.99%) RESTful
3 160 (2.88%) .NET
4 157 (2.83%) Kafka
5 153 (2.76%) Spring
6 151 (2.72%) React
7 148 (2.67%) SOAP
8 129 (2.33%) JSON
9 124 (2.24%) CSS
10 117 (2.11%) HTML
11 115 (2.07%) Spring Boot
12 110 (1.98%) XML
13 109 (1.96%) Middleware
14 97 (1.75%) Node.js
15 92 (1.66%) AngularJS
16 80 (1.44%) Web Services
17 75 (1.35%) OAuth
18 74 (1.33%) PySpark
19 55 (0.99%) Playwright
20 48 (0.87%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 285 (5.14%) Onboarding
2 273 (4.92%) Product Ownership
3 242 (4.36%) Cloud Native
4 211 (3.80%) Self-Motivation
5 204 (3.68%) Data Centre
6 165 (2.97%) Distributed Systems
7 164 (2.96%) Enterprise Software
8 155 (2.79%) Analytical Mindset
9 154 (2.78%) Management Information System
10 131 (2.36%) Legacy Systems
11 129 (2.33%) Data Structures
12 127 (2.29%) Data Protection Act
13 110 (1.98%) Virtual Team
14 91 (1.64%) Driving Licence
15 71 (1.28%) Algorithms
16 63 (1.14%) AI Agents
17 61 (1.10%) CMDB
18 54 (0.97%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 53 (0.96%) Mobile App
19 53 (0.96%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 712 (12.83%) Windows
2 287 (5.17%) Linux
3 160 (2.88%) Windows Server
4 121 (2.18%) Windows 10
5 110 (1.98%) Unix
6 93 (1.68%) Android
7 86 (1.55%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.51%) Mac OS
9 47 (0.85%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 15 (0.27%) VMS
11 15 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
12 12 (0.22%) zOS
13 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
13 9 (0.16%) Solaris
14 6 (0.11%) CentOS
14 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
15 5 (0.090%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.072%) Debian
16 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2016
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,517 (27.34%) Agile
2 1,094 (19.72%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,014 (18.28%) Stakeholder Management
4 918 (16.55%) CI/CD
5 860 (15.50%) DevOps
6 699 (12.60%) AI
7 604 (10.89%) Decision-Making
8 581 (10.47%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 577 (10.40%) Analytics
10 572 (10.31%) Migration
11 525 (9.46%) Customer Service
12 513 (9.25%) ITIL
13 438 (7.89%) Validation
14 432 (7.79%) Data Modelling
15 430 (7.75%) Business Intelligence
16 417 (7.52%) Test Automation
17 408 (7.35%) Scrum
18 366 (6.60%) Project Management
19 359 (6.47%) Roadmaps
20 340 (6.13%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 971 (17.50%) SQL
2 913 (16.46%) Python
3 455 (8.20%) Java
4 319 (5.75%) JavaScript
5 296 (5.34%) PowerShell
6 190 (3.42%) C#
7 144 (2.60%) Bash
8 128 (2.31%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 70 (1.26%) C++
11 54 (0.97%) T-SQL
12 46 (0.83%) Shell Script
13 41 (0.74%) Go
14 39 (0.70%) Kotlin
15 37 (0.67%) Bicep
16 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
16 33 (0.59%) C
16 33 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 31 (0.56%) R
18 29 (0.52%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,211 (21.83%) Security Cleared
2 832 (15.00%) SC Cleared
3 649 (11.70%) Degree
4 218 (3.93%) DV Cleared
5 189 (3.41%) Computer Science Degree
6 159 (2.87%) BPSS Clearance
7 153 (2.76%) Microsoft Certification
8 137 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 80 (1.44%) PMP
10 79 (1.42%) CISSP
11 78 (1.41%) CCNA
12 76 (1.37%) PMI Certification
13 75 (1.35%) A+ Certification
14 74 (1.33%) Azure Certification
15 59 (1.06%) Master's Degree
16 55 (0.99%) Network+ Certification
17 52 (0.94%) MCSE
18 50 (0.90%) CISM
19 45 (0.81%) AWS Certification
20 42 (0.76%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 381 (6.87%) Data Quality
2 338 (6.09%) QA
3 143 (2.58%) GDPR
4 142 (2.56%) Accessibility
5 123 (2.22%) SLA
6 90 (1.62%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 86 (1.55%) PMO
8 69 (1.24%) NIST
9 60 (1.08%) GRC
10 30 (0.54%) WCAG
11 28 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 27 (0.49%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.41%) GxP
14 15 (0.27%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 15 (0.27%) NCSC
14 15 (0.27%) PCI DSS
15 14 (0.25%) COBIT
15 14 (0.25%) ISO 20022
16 13 (0.23%) HIPAA
17 12 (0.22%) Cyber Essentials
System Software
1 423 (7.62%) Active Directory
2 362 (6.52%) Docker
3 136 (2.45%) VMware Infrastructure
4 50 (0.90%) VMware NSX
4 50 (0.90%) vSphere
5 48 (0.87%) Hyper-V
5 48 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
6 32 (0.58%) Virtual Machines
7 29 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
8 22 (0.40%) vCloud
9 19 (0.34%) Firmware
10 18 (0.32%) IAG
11 12 (0.22%) Oracle RAC
12 6 (0.11%) NFS
12 6 (0.11%) Squid
13 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
14 3 (0.054%) Snort
15 2 (0.036%) SRDF
15 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 421 (7.59%) Kubernetes
2 329 (5.93%) Terraform
3 171 (3.08%) Ansible
4 132 (2.38%) Microsoft Intune
5 105 (1.89%) Grafana
6 89 (1.60%) Prometheus
7 88 (1.59%) SCCM
8 57 (1.03%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 30 (0.54%) FortiGate
11 26 (0.47%) Control-M
12 25 (0.45%) SCOM
13 20 (0.36%) Argo
14 18 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.31%) WSUS
16 14 (0.25%) Kibana
16 14 (0.25%) Nessus
17 12 (0.22%) IBM Guardium
17 12 (0.22%) NetBackup
18 11 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 1,120 (20.19%) Microsoft
2 403 (7.26%) Oracle
3 351 (6.33%) ServiceNow
4 350 (6.31%) SAP
5 204 (3.68%) VMware
6 180 (3.24%) Google
7 140 (2.52%) Salesforce
8 130 (2.34%) Cisco
9 125 (2.25%) Splunk
10 123 (2.22%) Databricks
11 85 (1.53%) Workday
12 69 (1.24%) Dynatrace
13 66 (1.19%) Adobe
14 61 (1.10%) Dell
15 59 (1.06%) MuleSoft
16 55 (0.99%) Apple
17 54 (0.97%) Red Hat
18 53 (0.96%) Citrix
19 52 (0.94%) CyberArk
20 48 (0.87%) IBM
4,329 Problem-Solving jobs Nationwide