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 15 October 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
15 Oct 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 6 9
Rank change year-on-year -6 +3 +4
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,986 5,063 4,685
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.83% 15.25% 12.44%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.77% 16.85% 14.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,322 3,012 2,722
10th Percentile £260 £243 £263
25th Percentile £388 £381 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £485 £500
Median % change year-on-year +2.06% -3.00% -0.10%
75th Percentile £600 £600 £600
90th Percentile £700 £700 £700
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £450 £475
% change year-on-year - -5.26% -2.56%
Number of hourly rates quoted 625 327 204
10th Percentile £13.45 £13.25 £14.55
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £15.62
Median hourly rate £18.25 £20.00 £17.00
Median % change year-on-year -8.75% +17.65% -66.26%
75th Percentile £33.75 £33.25 £31.89
90th Percentile £70.00 £63.54 £62.23
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.00 £18.82 £16.23
% change year-on-year -4.36% +15.96% -66.47%

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 46,870 30,047 32,387
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.76% 90.49% 86.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 28,156 18,700 19,515
10th Percentile £325 £294 £308
25th Percentile £425 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £525 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +5.00% -4.76% -2.42%
75th Percentile £638 £623 £638
90th Percentile £738 £725 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 3,444 1,888 1,247
10th Percentile £13.53 £14.38 £15.00
25th Percentile £16.94 £17.30 £20.12
Median hourly rate £37.50 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +49.11% -37.13% -10.11%
75th Percentile £65.00 £42.50 £65.00
90th Percentile £78.18 £65.25 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.50 £22.27 £40.33
% change year-on-year +68.43% -44.79% -8.14%

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 15 October 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 15 October 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 15 October 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 -5 5,153 £500 +2.56% 1,987
UK excluding London -2 3,224 £450 - 1,720
London -12 2,195 £525 +5.00% 517
Work from Home -4 1,609 £500 - 899
South East -3 835 £475 +5.56% 479
North of England -8 765 £450 -5.26% 410
Midlands -5 615 £450 +2.33% 299
West Midlands -8 444 £450 -5.26% 166
North West -8 378 £450 -1.64% 199
South West -6 322 £503 +8.65% 286
Scotland -3 315 £429 -4.67% 60
East of England 0 305 £423 -15.50% 174
Yorkshire -5 303 £475 -4.04% 143
East Midlands +2 167 £425 +11.71% 133
North East -4 86 £375 -16.67% 76
Wales -6 67 £468 +13.33% 55
Northern Ireland -5 28 £425 -18.27% 14
Channel Islands -2 5 £600 -

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
1 261 (4.36%) SharePoint
2 252 (4.21%) Confluence
3 92 (1.54%) Microsoft Exchange
4 65 (1.09%) Apache Spark
5 48 (0.80%) Apache
5 48 (0.80%) Apache Airflow
6 27 (0.45%) CMS
7 24 (0.40%) Oracle Workflow
7 24 (0.40%) SAS
8 18 (0.30%) WebLogic
9 16 (0.27%) WebSphere
10 13 (0.22%) Jupyter
11 11 (0.18%) CICS
12 9 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
12 9 (0.15%) Oracle SOA Suite
13 8 (0.13%) IIS
14 7 (0.12%) Appian
14 7 (0.12%) WebLogic Portal
14 7 (0.12%) WordPress
15 6 (0.10%) Mule
Applications
1 367 (6.13%) Microsoft Excel
2 272 (4.54%) Microsoft Office
3 149 (2.49%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 71 (1.19%) Microsoft Project
5 68 (1.14%) MS Visio
6 27 (0.45%) Adobe Creative Suite
7 24 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
8 16 (0.27%) AutoCAD
8 16 (0.27%) Chatbot
8 16 (0.27%) Revit
9 15 (0.25%) Sketch
10 11 (0.18%) Navisworks
10 11 (0.18%) Windchill
11 10 (0.17%) Trello
12 6 (0.10%) Adobe After Effects
12 6 (0.10%) Final Cut Pro
13 5 (0.084%) CPLEX
14 4 (0.067%) Adobe XD
15 3 (0.050%) CATIA
15 3 (0.050%) NUKE
Business Applications
1 131 (2.19%) SAP S/4HANA
2 56 (0.94%) Dynamics CRM
3 35 (0.58%) Oracle EBS
4 31 (0.52%) NetSuite
4 31 (0.52%) Workday HCM
5 28 (0.47%) SAP GRC
6 24 (0.40%) Remedy ITSM
7 17 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
8 15 (0.25%) Salesforce CRM
8 15 (0.25%) Teamcenter
9 14 (0.23%) Oracle General Ledger
10 13 (0.22%) Aladdin
10 13 (0.22%) Oracle Receivables
11 12 (0.20%) SAP HCM
11 12 (0.20%) SAP SD
12 11 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
13 10 (0.17%) Oracle ERP
13 10 (0.17%) SAP CRM
13 10 (0.17%) SAP FI
14 9 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
Cloud Services
1 1,163 (19.43%) Azure
2 799 (13.35%) AWS
3 519 (8.67%) Microsoft 365
4 464 (7.75%) Power Platform
5 339 (5.66%) GCP
6 301 (5.03%) Azure DevOps
7 244 (4.08%) Entra ID
8 233 (3.89%) GitHub
9 149 (2.49%) SaaS
10 135 (2.26%) Serverless
11 120 (2.00%) Power Automate
12 106 (1.77%) GitHub Actions
13 103 (1.72%) Microsoft Copilot
14 99 (1.65%) Dynamics 365
15 96 (1.60%) PowerApps
16 82 (1.37%) Snowflake
17 79 (1.32%) OneDrive
18 66 (1.10%) OpenShift
19 63 (1.05%) AWS CloudFormation
19 63 (1.05%) Azure Data Factory
Communications & Networking
1 214 (3.58%) DNS
2 203 (3.39%) Firewall
3 159 (2.66%) VPN
4 128 (2.14%) TCP/IP
5 127 (2.12%) Network Security
5 127 (2.12%) WAN
6 122 (2.04%) DHCP
7 106 (1.77%) LAN
8 80 (1.34%) Wi-Fi
9 71 (1.19%) Wireless
10 51 (0.85%) VLAN
11 50 (0.84%) SAN
11 50 (0.84%) VoIP
12 49 (0.82%) BGP
13 33 (0.55%) Intranet
13 33 (0.55%) MPLS
13 33 (0.55%) SD-WAN
14 30 (0.50%) HTTP
15 28 (0.47%) Broadband
16 27 (0.45%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 340 (5.68%) Power BI
2 209 (3.49%) SQL Server
3 192 (3.21%) Relational Database
4 168 (2.81%) Data Warehouse
5 155 (2.59%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (1.82%) MongoDB
7 102 (1.70%) Metadata
8 86 (1.44%) NoSQL
9 79 (1.32%) Tableau
10 76 (1.27%) Data Lake
11 67 (1.12%) Oracle Database
12 65 (1.09%) MySQL
13 42 (0.70%) Big Data
14 36 (0.60%) Oracle Reports
14 36 (0.60%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 30 (0.50%) Db2
15 30 (0.50%) Power Query
16 29 (0.48%) Delta Lake
16 29 (0.48%) DynamoDB
17 28 (0.47%) Amazon RDS
Development Applications
1 514 (8.59%) JIRA
2 414 (6.92%) Git
3 223 (3.73%) Jenkins
4 156 (2.61%) GitLab
5 79 (1.32%) Selenium
6 55 (0.92%) Maven
7 50 (0.84%) Gradle
8 49 (0.82%) Cucumber
9 44 (0.74%) Cypress.io
9 44 (0.74%) JUnit
10 37 (0.62%) Postman
11 34 (0.57%) Bitbucket
12 31 (0.52%) REST Assured
13 29 (0.48%) SonarQube
14 25 (0.42%) Mockito
15 24 (0.40%) JMeter
16 20 (0.33%) Gatling
17 18 (0.30%) Oracle Forms
18 17 (0.28%) WebDriver
19 16 (0.27%) Atlassian Bamboo
General
1 3,224 (53.86%) Social Skills
2 2,561 (42.78%) Analytical Skills
3 1,397 (23.34%) Finance
4 644 (10.76%) Public Sector
5 489 (8.17%) Banking
6 330 (5.51%) Organisational Skills
7 293 (4.89%) Manufacturing
8 202 (3.37%) Documentation Skills
9 184 (3.07%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 184 (3.07%) Influencing Skills
10 165 (2.76%) Legal
11 161 (2.69%) Retail
12 131 (2.19%) Telecoms
13 126 (2.10%) Presentation Skills
14 122 (2.04%) Marketing
15 117 (1.95%) Front Office
16 105 (1.75%) Investment Banking
17 92 (1.54%) Aerospace
18 77 (1.29%) Back Office
19 68 (1.14%) Military
Job Titles
1 761 (12.71%) Analyst
2 751 (12.55%) Developer
3 590 (9.86%) Senior
4 434 (7.25%) Lead
5 318 (5.31%) Architect
6 292 (4.88%) Consultant
7 278 (4.64%) Business Analyst
8 240 (4.01%) IT Support
9 226 (3.78%) Support Engineer
10 198 (3.31%) Data Engineer
11 184 (3.07%) Administrator
12 177 (2.96%) Project Manager
13 142 (2.37%) IT Engineer
14 135 (2.26%) Java Developer
15 125 (2.09%) Data Analyst
16 117 (1.95%) Network Engineer
17 115 (1.92%) DevOps Engineer
18 113 (1.89%) Infrastructure Engineer
19 111 (1.85%) IT Support Engineer
20 103 (1.72%) Senior Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 436 (7.28%) REST
2 363 (6.06%) Terraform
3 202 (3.37%) .NET
4 200 (3.34%) RESTful
5 173 (2.89%) SOAP
6 167 (2.79%) React
7 156 (2.61%) Kafka
8 148 (2.47%) Spring
9 142 (2.37%) HTML
9 142 (2.37%) XML
10 137 (2.29%) JSON
11 134 (2.24%) CSS
11 134 (2.24%) Web Services
12 128 (2.14%) Spring Boot
13 122 (2.04%) Middleware
14 102 (1.70%) Node.js
15 91 (1.52%) AngularJS
16 88 (1.47%) OAuth
17 72 (1.20%) PySpark
18 64 (1.07%) Playwright
Miscellaneous
1 354 (5.91%) Onboarding
2 291 (4.86%) Cloud Native
3 288 (4.81%) Product Ownership
4 235 (3.93%) Enterprise Software
5 233 (3.89%) Management Information System
6 225 (3.76%) Self-Motivation
7 177 (2.96%) Data Centre
8 158 (2.64%) Distributed Systems
9 147 (2.46%) Data Structures
10 130 (2.17%) Data Protection Act
11 125 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
12 118 (1.97%) Analytical Mindset
13 101 (1.69%) Virtual Team
14 95 (1.59%) AI Agents
15 90 (1.50%) Driving Licence
16 75 (1.25%) CMDB
17 68 (1.14%) Mobile App
18 65 (1.09%) NHS
19 62 (1.04%) Algorithms
20 59 (0.99%) Operational Technology
Operating Systems
1 760 (12.70%) Windows
2 338 (5.65%) Linux
3 212 (3.54%) Windows Server
4 137 (2.29%) Windows 10
5 114 (1.90%) Unix
6 92 (1.54%) Apple iOS
7 87 (1.45%) macOS
8 85 (1.42%) Android
9 57 (0.95%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.35%) Ubuntu
11 20 (0.33%) VMS
12 18 (0.30%) Windows Server 2019
13 13 (0.22%) Solaris
13 13 (0.22%) zOS
14 9 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
15 8 (0.13%) CentOS
15 8 (0.13%) Windows Server 2016
16 6 (0.10%) AIX
16 6 (0.10%) Embedded Linux
17 5 (0.084%) SUSE Linux Enterprise Server
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,661 (27.75%) Agile
2 1,549 (25.88%) Stakeholder Management
3 1,388 (23.19%) Continuous Improvement
4 1,046 (17.47%) CI/CD
5 925 (15.45%) DevOps
6 789 (13.18%) AI
7 693 (11.58%) Stakeholder Engagement
8 656 (10.96%) Decision-Making
9 602 (10.06%) Migration
10 576 (9.62%) Customer Service
11 568 (9.49%) Analytics
12 511 (8.54%) ITIL
13 503 (8.40%) Test Automation
13 503 (8.40%) Validation
14 448 (7.48%) Scrum
15 415 (6.93%) Data Modelling
16 402 (6.72%) Project Delivery
17 397 (6.63%) Business Intelligence
17 397 (6.63%) Technical Leadership
18 396 (6.62%) Software Engineering
Programming Languages
1 1,014 (16.94%) SQL
2 889 (14.85%) Python
3 447 (7.47%) Java
4 365 (6.10%) JavaScript
5 345 (5.76%) PowerShell
6 235 (3.93%) C#
7 166 (2.77%) Bash
8 156 (2.61%) TypeScript
9 90 (1.50%) PL/SQL
10 54 (0.90%) C++
11 52 (0.87%) Shell Script
12 49 (0.82%) T-SQL
13 45 (0.75%) Go
14 37 (0.62%) Scala
15 36 (0.60%) Bicep
16 34 (0.57%) Kotlin
17 28 (0.47%) Data Analysis Expressions
17 28 (0.47%) Groovy
18 25 (0.42%) R
19 24 (0.40%) Apex Code
Qualifications
1 1,315 (21.97%) Security Cleared
2 957 (15.99%) SC Cleared
3 696 (11.63%) Degree
4 243 (4.06%) DV Cleared
5 210 (3.51%) Computer Science Degree
6 209 (3.49%) BPSS Clearance
7 134 (2.24%) Microsoft Certification
8 100 (1.67%) Cisco Certification
9 87 (1.45%) Azure Certification
9 87 (1.45%) PMI Certification
10 81 (1.35%) PMP
11 80 (1.34%) CISSP
12 63 (1.05%) Master's Degree
13 58 (0.97%) DBS Check
14 57 (0.95%) AWS Certification
15 51 (0.85%) A+ Certification
16 47 (0.79%) CISM
17 44 (0.74%) CCNA
17 44 (0.74%) ITIL Certification
18 43 (0.72%) ISTQB
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 443 (7.40%) Data Quality
2 405 (6.77%) QA
3 163 (2.72%) Accessibility
4 132 (2.21%) GDPR
5 127 (2.12%) SLA
6 109 (1.82%) PMO
7 90 (1.50%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 67 (1.12%) GRC
9 64 (1.07%) NIST
10 40 (0.67%) WCAG
11 27 (0.45%) Actionable Recommendations
12 23 (0.38%) Cyber Essentials
13 22 (0.37%) GxP
13 22 (0.37%) NCSC
14 18 (0.30%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 18 (0.30%) PCI DSS
15 16 (0.27%) Sarbanes-Oxley
16 14 (0.23%) ISO 20022
17 13 (0.22%) GMP
18 12 (0.20%) ISO 9001
System Software
1 438 (7.32%) Active Directory
2 382 (6.38%) Docker
3 171 (2.86%) VMware Infrastructure
4 67 (1.12%) Hyper-V
4 67 (1.12%) VMware ESXi
5 58 (0.97%) vSphere
6 53 (0.89%) VMware NSX
7 41 (0.68%) Virtual Desktop
8 29 (0.48%) Virtual Machines
9 24 (0.40%) vCloud
10 23 (0.38%) IAG
11 16 (0.27%) Firmware
12 11 (0.18%) Virtual Servers
13 6 (0.10%) Citrix Hypervisor
13 6 (0.10%) Microsoft App-V
13 6 (0.10%) NFS
13 6 (0.10%) XenApp
13 6 (0.10%) XenDesktop
14 5 (0.084%) Oracle RAC
14 5 (0.084%) RACF
Systems Management
1 432 (7.22%) Kubernetes
2 176 (2.94%) Ansible
3 137 (2.29%) Microsoft Intune
4 96 (1.60%) Grafana
4 96 (1.60%) SCCM
5 76 (1.27%) Prometheus
6 45 (0.75%) vCenter Server
7 42 (0.70%) SCOM
8 31 (0.52%) Single Sign-On
9 25 (0.42%) Jamf Pro
10 19 (0.32%) Control-M
11 17 (0.28%) FortiGate
12 15 (0.25%) NetBackup
12 15 (0.25%) WSUS
13 12 (0.20%) Kibana
13 12 (0.20%) Nessus
13 12 (0.20%) VxRail
14 11 (0.18%) Istio
15 10 (0.17%) Functional Safety
15 10 (0.17%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,435 (23.97%) Microsoft
2 401 (6.70%) Oracle
3 370 (6.18%) SAP
4 346 (5.78%) ServiceNow
5 217 (3.63%) VMware
6 183 (3.06%) Google
7 151 (2.52%) Cisco
8 143 (2.39%) Databricks
9 142 (2.37%) Salesforce
10 126 (2.10%) Splunk
11 76 (1.27%) Workday
12 71 (1.19%) Dynatrace
13 68 (1.14%) IBM
14 63 (1.05%) Adobe
15 61 (1.02%) Apple
16 53 (0.89%) CyberArk
17 52 (0.87%) Red Hat
18 48 (0.80%) MuleSoft
18 48 (0.80%) Palo Alto
19 38 (0.63%) Citrix