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

6 months to
3 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 5,590 5,311 4,404
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.52% 16.04% 11.28%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.38% 17.74% 13.19%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,178 3,236 2,735
10th Percentile £250 £250 £250
25th Percentile £375 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.51% -2.50% -2.72%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £615
90th Percentile £700 £700 £714
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £475
% change year-on-year -2.17% -3.16% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 478 313 292
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.86 £11.75
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.25 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.03 £21.24 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -10.40% +30.87% -69.67%
75th Percentile £40.00 £38.42 £31.15
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.77 £18.85 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.42% +16.14% -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 45,145 29,940 33,399
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.95% 90.42% 85.56%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,873 18,766 21,491
10th Percentile £325 £300 £310
25th Percentile £420 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -4.55%
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 2,760 1,664 1,872
10th Percentile £14.50 £14.20 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.50 £17.30 £18.14
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.33
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.63% -5.12%
75th Percentile £68.00 £50.00 £65.00
90th Percentile £82.25 £68.00 £74.95
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.63 £40.94
% change year-on-year +86.03% -42.28% +2.35%

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 3 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 3 August 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 3 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 4,844 £493 -0.45% 4,933
UK excluding London -3 2,998 £450 -2.17% 3,601
London -13 2,074 £520 +4.00% 1,976
Work from Home -5 1,561 £492 -1.60% 1,986
South East -4 769 £479 -2.49% 1,075
North of England -9 746 £450 -5.26% 821
Midlands -6 547 £450 +5.88% 601
West Midlands -8 395 £450 - 356
North West -10 353 £450 -6.25% 421
South West -2 340 £500 +5.26% 446
Yorkshire -6 337 £450 -5.26% 289
Scotland -4 276 £438 -2.78% 172
East of England +1 261 £450 -3.74% 364
East Midlands 0 150 £473 +28.57% 245
Wales -3 65 £475 +26.67% 87
North East -15 61 £373 -17.22% 121
Northern Ireland -5 25 £380 -24.00% 142

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
1 237 (4.24%) Confluence
2 201 (3.60%) SharePoint
3 100 (1.79%) Microsoft Exchange
4 67 (1.20%) Apache Spark
5 43 (0.77%) Apache
5 43 (0.77%) Apache Airflow
6 39 (0.70%) SAS
7 32 (0.57%) CMS
8 31 (0.55%) Oracle Workflow
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%) Oracle Self-Service HR
17 5 (0.089%) Camunda
Applications
1 295 (5.28%) Microsoft Excel
2 256 (4.58%) Microsoft Office
3 100 (1.79%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 81 (1.45%) MS Visio
5 67 (1.20%) Microsoft Project
6 32 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 27 (0.48%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 26 (0.47%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.27%) AutoCAD
9 15 (0.27%) Sketch
10 12 (0.21%) Revit
10 12 (0.21%) Trello
11 10 (0.18%) CATIA
12 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
13 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
13 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
14 5 (0.089%) Photoshop
15 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
15 4 (0.072%) Maya
15 4 (0.072%) Navisworks
Business Applications
1 138 (2.47%) SAP S/4HANA
2 47 (0.84%) Dynamics CRM
3 40 (0.72%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.47%) NetSuite
4 26 (0.47%) Remedy ITSM
5 23 (0.41%) Workday HCM
6 21 (0.38%) SAP GRC
7 15 (0.27%) Aladdin
8 14 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
8 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
9 13 (0.23%) iTrent
10 12 (0.21%) Salesforce CRM
10 12 (0.21%) SAP HCM
11 10 (0.18%) Finacle
11 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
12 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
12 9 (0.16%) SAP CRM
12 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
12 9 (0.16%) SAP Payroll
Cloud Services
1 1,067 (19.09%) Azure
2 816 (14.60%) AWS
3 429 (7.67%) Microsoft 365
4 423 (7.57%) Power Platform
5 321 (5.74%) GCP
6 258 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
7 212 (3.79%) Entra ID
8 199 (3.56%) GitHub
9 148 (2.65%) SaaS
10 131 (2.34%) Serverless
11 100 (1.79%) GitHub Actions
12 86 (1.54%) Power Automate
13 79 (1.41%) Amazon S3
14 78 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
15 77 (1.38%) AWS Lambda
16 67 (1.20%) PowerApps
17 63 (1.13%) Azure Data Factory
18 62 (1.11%) Microsoft Copilot
18 62 (1.11%) OpenShift
18 62 (1.11%) Snowflake
Communications & Networking
1 228 (4.08%) DNS
2 194 (3.47%) Firewall
3 147 (2.63%) VPN
4 137 (2.45%) TCP/IP
5 136 (2.43%) DHCP
6 121 (2.16%) WAN
7 102 (1.82%) LAN
8 95 (1.70%) Network Security
9 82 (1.47%) SAN
10 81 (1.45%) Wi-Fi
11 62 (1.11%) VLAN
12 56 (1.00%) Wireless
13 53 (0.95%) BGP
14 39 (0.70%) OSPF
14 39 (0.70%) SD-WAN
15 36 (0.64%) VoIP
16 33 (0.59%) MPLS
17 32 (0.57%) Structured Cabling
18 26 (0.47%) HTTP
18 26 (0.47%) VXLAN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (5.89%) Power BI
2 230 (4.11%) SQL Server
3 168 (3.01%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (2.97%) Relational Database
5 162 (2.90%) PostgreSQL
6 125 (2.24%) MongoDB
7 102 (1.82%) Metadata
8 94 (1.68%) NoSQL
9 89 (1.59%) Tableau
10 87 (1.56%) Data Lake
11 67 (1.20%) Big Data
12 61 (1.09%) MySQL
13 54 (0.97%) Oracle Database
14 50 (0.89%) Oracle Reports
15 47 (0.84%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 36 (0.64%) Db2
17 28 (0.50%) DynamoDB
18 26 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
18 26 (0.47%) Hadoop
18 26 (0.47%) Pentaho
Development Applications
1 511 (9.14%) JIRA
2 339 (6.06%) Git
3 191 (3.42%) Jenkins
4 126 (2.25%) GitLab
5 75 (1.34%) Selenium
6 40 (0.72%) Cypress.io
6 40 (0.72%) Postman
7 34 (0.61%) Gradle
8 33 (0.59%) Maven
9 32 (0.57%) REST Assured
10 31 (0.55%) Cucumber
11 27 (0.48%) Bitbucket
12 25 (0.45%) JUnit
13 21 (0.38%) Mockito
14 19 (0.34%) WebDriver
15 18 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
15 18 (0.32%) JMeter
16 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
17 14 (0.25%) Oracle Forms
18 13 (0.23%) SonarQube
General
1 2,899 (51.86%) Social Skills
2 2,299 (41.13%) Analytical Skills
3 1,315 (23.52%) Finance
4 580 (10.38%) Public Sector
5 434 (7.76%) Banking
6 229 (4.10%) Organisational Skills
7 213 (3.81%) Retail
8 199 (3.56%) Documentation Skills
9 182 (3.26%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 161 (2.88%) Manufacturing
11 148 (2.65%) Legal
12 144 (2.58%) Influencing Skills
13 118 (2.11%) Front Office
13 118 (2.11%) Marketing
14 117 (2.09%) Presentation Skills
15 106 (1.90%) Telecoms
16 89 (1.59%) Investment Banking
17 81 (1.45%) Back Office
18 63 (1.13%) Aerospace
19 58 (1.04%) Financial Institution
Job Titles
1 745 (13.33%) Analyst
2 700 (12.52%) Developer
3 518 (9.27%) Senior
4 418 (7.48%) Lead
5 369 (6.60%) Architect
6 265 (4.74%) Business Analyst
7 259 (4.63%) Consultant
8 231 (4.13%) Data Engineer
9 198 (3.54%) IT Support
10 193 (3.45%) Support Engineer
11 171 (3.06%) Project Manager
12 141 (2.52%) Java Developer
13 135 (2.42%) Administrator
14 133 (2.38%) IT Engineer
15 120 (2.15%) Data Analyst
16 109 (1.95%) Solutions Architect
17 100 (1.79%) Network Engineer
17 100 (1.79%) Software Engineer
18 98 (1.75%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 92 (1.65%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 351 (6.28%) REST
2 166 (2.97%) RESTful
3 161 (2.88%) .NET
4 157 (2.81%) Kafka
5 154 (2.75%) Spring
6 150 (2.68%) React
7 148 (2.65%) SOAP
8 129 (2.31%) JSON
9 122 (2.18%) CSS
10 116 (2.08%) HTML
11 115 (2.06%) Spring Boot
12 110 (1.97%) XML
13 109 (1.95%) Middleware
14 97 (1.74%) Node.js
15 91 (1.63%) AngularJS
16 82 (1.47%) Web Services
17 77 (1.38%) OAuth
18 73 (1.31%) PySpark
19 55 (0.98%) Playwright
20 48 (0.86%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 296 (5.30%) Onboarding
2 270 (4.83%) Product Ownership
3 243 (4.35%) Cloud Native
4 207 (3.70%) Self-Motivation
5 206 (3.69%) Data Centre
6 167 (2.99%) Enterprise Software
7 165 (2.95%) Distributed Systems
8 158 (2.83%) Analytical Mindset
9 157 (2.81%) Management Information System
10 131 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
10 131 (2.34%) Data Structures
10 131 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
11 106 (1.90%) Virtual Team
12 91 (1.63%) Driving Licence
13 74 (1.32%) Algorithms
14 65 (1.16%) AI Agents
15 61 (1.09%) CMDB
16 57 (1.02%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
17 55 (0.98%) Derivative
17 55 (0.98%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 719 (12.86%) Windows
2 295 (5.28%) Linux
3 164 (2.93%) Windows Server
4 122 (2.18%) Windows 10
5 111 (1.99%) Unix
6 93 (1.66%) Android
7 86 (1.54%) Apple iOS
8 84 (1.50%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.82%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 19 (0.34%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.29%) Windows Server 2019
12 15 (0.27%) VMS
13 12 (0.21%) zOS
14 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
15 8 (0.14%) Solaris
16 6 (0.11%) CentOS
16 6 (0.11%) Windows 7
16 6 (0.11%) Windows Server 2012
17 5 (0.089%) Windows Server 2016
18 4 (0.072%) Debian
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,524 (27.26%) Agile
2 1,110 (19.86%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,028 (18.39%) Stakeholder Management
4 928 (16.60%) CI/CD
5 867 (15.51%) DevOps
6 707 (12.65%) AI
7 609 (10.89%) Decision-Making
8 587 (10.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
9 582 (10.41%) Analytics
10 570 (10.20%) Migration
11 536 (9.59%) Customer Service
12 510 (9.12%) ITIL
13 439 (7.85%) Validation
14 434 (7.76%) Data Modelling
15 432 (7.73%) Business Intelligence
16 418 (7.48%) Test Automation
17 409 (7.32%) Scrum
18 363 (6.49%) Project Management
19 362 (6.48%) Roadmaps
20 341 (6.10%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 978 (17.50%) SQL
2 911 (16.30%) Python
3 456 (8.16%) Java
4 318 (5.69%) JavaScript
5 296 (5.30%) PowerShell
6 188 (3.36%) C#
7 146 (2.61%) Bash
8 125 (2.24%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.66%) PL/SQL
10 69 (1.23%) C++
11 54 (0.97%) T-SQL
12 45 (0.81%) Shell Script
13 40 (0.72%) Kotlin
14 39 (0.70%) Go
15 36 (0.64%) Bicep
16 34 (0.61%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.59%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 32 (0.57%) C
18 32 (0.57%) R
18 32 (0.57%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,218 (21.79%) Security Cleared
2 840 (15.03%) SC Cleared
3 654 (11.70%) Degree
4 219 (3.92%) DV Cleared
5 190 (3.40%) Computer Science Degree
6 158 (2.83%) BPSS Clearance
7 157 (2.81%) Microsoft Certification
8 138 (2.47%) Cisco Certification
9 82 (1.47%) CISSP
10 79 (1.41%) CCNA
11 78 (1.40%) PMP
12 75 (1.34%) A+ Certification
13 74 (1.32%) PMI Certification
14 72 (1.29%) Azure Certification
15 60 (1.07%) Master's Degree
16 55 (0.98%) Network+ Certification
17 53 (0.95%) MCSE
18 52 (0.93%) CISM
19 44 (0.79%) AWS Certification
20 42 (0.75%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 383 (6.85%) Data Quality
2 342 (6.12%) QA
3 144 (2.58%) Accessibility
4 142 (2.54%) GDPR
5 121 (2.16%) SLA
6 94 (1.68%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 87 (1.56%) PMO
8 73 (1.31%) NIST
9 63 (1.13%) GRC
10 31 (0.55%) WCAG
11 28 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 27 (0.48%) Actionable Recommendations
13 23 (0.41%) GxP
14 16 (0.29%) NCSC
15 15 (0.27%) 21 CFR Part 11
15 15 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 15 (0.27%) ISO 20022
15 15 (0.27%) PCI DSS
16 14 (0.25%) COBIT
17 12 (0.21%) HIPAA
System Software
1 424 (7.58%) Active Directory
2 367 (6.57%) Docker
3 140 (2.50%) VMware Infrastructure
4 52 (0.93%) Hyper-V
5 51 (0.91%) VMware ESXi
6 50 (0.89%) VMware NSX
6 50 (0.89%) vSphere
7 31 (0.55%) Virtual Machines
8 29 (0.52%) Virtual Desktop
9 22 (0.39%) vCloud
10 20 (0.36%) Firmware
11 18 (0.32%) IAG
12 12 (0.21%) Oracle RAC
13 6 (0.11%) NFS
13 6 (0.11%) Squid
14 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
14 4 (0.072%) Virtual Servers
15 3 (0.054%) Snort
16 2 (0.036%) Apache ZooKeeper
16 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 423 (7.57%) Kubernetes
2 327 (5.85%) Terraform
3 170 (3.04%) Ansible
4 130 (2.33%) Microsoft Intune
5 106 (1.90%) Grafana
6 91 (1.63%) Prometheus
7 88 (1.57%) SCCM
8 58 (1.04%) vCenter Server
9 34 (0.61%) Single Sign-On
10 29 (0.52%) FortiGate
11 28 (0.50%) SCOM
12 27 (0.48%) Control-M
13 19 (0.34%) Argo
14 18 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
15 17 (0.30%) WSUS
16 15 (0.27%) Nessus
17 14 (0.25%) Kibana
17 14 (0.25%) NetBackup
18 13 (0.23%) IBM Guardium
19 11 (0.20%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
Vendors
1 1,128 (20.18%) Microsoft
2 402 (7.19%) Oracle
3 352 (6.30%) ServiceNow
4 348 (6.23%) SAP
5 208 (3.72%) VMware
6 179 (3.20%) Google
7 143 (2.56%) Salesforce
8 133 (2.38%) Cisco
9 125 (2.24%) Splunk
10 122 (2.18%) Databricks
11 86 (1.54%) Workday
12 69 (1.23%) Dynatrace
13 67 (1.20%) Adobe
14 64 (1.14%) Dell
15 59 (1.06%) MuleSoft
16 56 (1.00%) Citrix
17 55 (0.98%) Apple
18 54 (0.97%) CyberArk
19 53 (0.95%) Red Hat
20 49 (0.88%) IBM