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

6 months to
4 Jun 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 13 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,173 4,963 4,631
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.57% 17.21% 10.80%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.49% 18.92% 12.65%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,009 3,077 2,820
10th Percentile £263 £250 £250
25th Percentile £388 £388 £385
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £495 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £713 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £458 £469 £475
% change year-on-year -2.45% -1.26% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 391 260 423
10th Percentile £13.10 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.10 £15.50 £13.84
Median hourly rate £20.44 £22.14 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.68% +36.41% -68.73%
75th Percentile £40.38 £35.00 £34.38
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.03 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.38 £20.25 £15.00
% change year-on-year -9.26% +35.00% -71.37%

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 41,432 26,234 36,612
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.66% 91.00% 85.42%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,858 16,712 23,486
10th Percentile £325 £300 £300
25th Percentile £413 £406 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £513 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year - -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £614 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £500 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +5.26% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,493 1,127 2,523
10th Percentile £14.64 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £20.00 £17.87 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.71 £27.64 £36.50
Median % change year-on-year +54.50% -24.27% +1.39%
75th Percentile £67.84 £56.25 £60.75
90th Percentile £81.24 £73.75 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +78.93% -34.02% +8.91%

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 June 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 June 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 June 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 -8 4,415 £500 - 3,808
UK excluding London -5 2,763 £458 -2.45% 2,796
London -12 1,879 £520 - 1,441
Work from Home -5 1,459 £488 -2.50% 2,057
North of England -10 712 £450 -6.49% 696
South East -6 652 £488 -2.50% 795
Midlands -9 492 £463 +6.32% 423
West Midlands -11 348 £469 +3.88% 259
North West -8 337 £443 -9.41% 389
Yorkshire -6 335 £463 -2.63% 228
South West -3 315 £500 -4.76% 334
Scotland -2 283 £443 -4.84% 148
East of England -2 240 £450 -4.76% 306
East Midlands -3 143 £443 +20.24% 162
Wales -2 68 £413 +10.00% 62
North East -15 46 £375 -16.67% 89
Northern Ireland -4 24 £380 +4.83% 115
Channel Islands -4 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
1 218 (4.21%) Confluence
2 150 (2.90%) SharePoint
3 85 (1.64%) Microsoft Exchange
4 77 (1.49%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.97%) Apache
6 49 (0.95%) Apache Airflow
7 42 (0.81%) SAS
8 32 (0.62%) CMS
9 23 (0.44%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 12 (0.23%) WebLogic
12 11 (0.21%) CICS
13 10 (0.19%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
14 8 (0.15%) Camunda
14 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
15 7 (0.14%) Jupyter
15 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
16 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 6 (0.12%) Oracle SOA Suite
Applications
1 299 (5.78%) Microsoft Excel
2 214 (4.14%) Microsoft Office
3 107 (2.07%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 70 (1.35%) Microsoft Project
4 70 (1.35%) MS Visio
5 32 (0.62%) Spreadsheet
6 23 (0.44%) Chatbot
7 19 (0.37%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 15 (0.29%) Sketch
9 10 (0.19%) AutoCAD
9 10 (0.19%) CATIA
10 8 (0.15%) Revit
11 7 (0.14%) Adobe XD
11 7 (0.14%) Trello
12 6 (0.12%) Photoshop
13 5 (0.097%) CPLEX
13 5 (0.097%) Maya
14 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
14 4 (0.077%) Adobe After Effects
14 4 (0.077%) Final Cut Pro
Business Applications
1 126 (2.44%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 18 (0.35%) Aladdin
5 17 (0.33%) Oracle ERP
5 17 (0.33%) Remedy ITSM
6 16 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
7 15 (0.29%) Workday HCM
8 14 (0.27%) SAP GRC
9 13 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
9 13 (0.25%) Teamcenter
10 12 (0.23%) SAP SD
10 12 (0.23%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
11 11 (0.21%) NEC Housing
12 9 (0.17%) iTrent
13 8 (0.15%) NetSuite
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle Assets
13 8 (0.15%) SAP FI
14 7 (0.14%) Loan IQ
14 7 (0.14%) Summit
Cloud Services
1 1,056 (20.41%) Azure
2 768 (14.85%) AWS
3 392 (7.58%) Power Platform
4 355 (6.86%) Microsoft 365
5 316 (6.11%) GCP
6 233 (4.50%) Azure DevOps
7 194 (3.75%) GitHub
8 167 (3.23%) Entra ID
9 135 (2.61%) Serverless
10 131 (2.53%) SaaS
11 97 (1.88%) GitHub Actions
12 81 (1.57%) Amazon S3
13 77 (1.49%) Dynamics 365
14 74 (1.43%) AWS Lambda
15 71 (1.37%) Snowflake
16 66 (1.28%) Azure Data Factory
16 66 (1.28%) OpenShift
17 65 (1.26%) Power Automate
18 58 (1.12%) PowerApps
19 47 (0.91%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 194 (3.75%) DNS
2 162 (3.13%) Firewall
3 119 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 112 (2.17%) VPN
5 109 (2.11%) WAN
6 103 (1.99%) DHCP
7 86 (1.66%) Network Security
8 83 (1.60%) SAN
9 82 (1.59%) LAN
10 69 (1.33%) Wi-Fi
11 51 (0.99%) VLAN
12 47 (0.91%) BGP
13 44 (0.85%) SD-WAN
14 42 (0.81%) OSPF
15 33 (0.64%) VoIP
15 33 (0.64%) Wireless
16 28 (0.54%) VXLAN
17 27 (0.52%) MPLS
18 23 (0.44%) Internet
18 23 (0.44%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 303 (5.86%) Power BI
2 197 (3.81%) SQL Server
3 151 (2.92%) Data Warehouse
4 133 (2.57%) Relational Database
5 128 (2.47%) PostgreSQL
6 102 (1.97%) Metadata
7 98 (1.89%) MongoDB
8 85 (1.64%) Tableau
9 84 (1.62%) NoSQL
10 79 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 74 (1.43%) Big Data
12 54 (1.04%) Oracle Reports
13 49 (0.95%) Oracle Database
14 48 (0.93%) MySQL
15 47 (0.91%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 37 (0.72%) Hadoop
17 29 (0.56%) Amazon RDS
18 28 (0.54%) Delta Lake
19 27 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
19 27 (0.52%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 496 (9.59%) JIRA
2 290 (5.61%) Git
3 173 (3.34%) Jenkins
4 125 (2.42%) GitLab
5 66 (1.28%) Selenium
6 40 (0.77%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 27 (0.52%) Cucumber
9 26 (0.50%) Bitbucket
10 22 (0.43%) Cypress.io
10 22 (0.43%) JUnit
11 17 (0.33%) JMeter
11 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.31%) Mockito
12 16 (0.31%) SonarQube
13 14 (0.27%) Maven
14 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
15 12 (0.23%) Gatling
16 11 (0.21%) Rational Rhapsody
General
1 2,701 (52.21%) Social Skills
2 2,015 (38.95%) Analytical Skills
3 1,204 (23.27%) Finance
4 478 (9.24%) Public Sector
5 398 (7.69%) Banking
6 215 (4.16%) Organisational Skills
7 188 (3.63%) Retail
8 183 (3.54%) Documentation Skills
9 149 (2.88%) Legal
10 128 (2.47%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 107 (2.07%) Presentation Skills
12 104 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
13 103 (1.99%) Manufacturing
14 100 (1.93%) Front Office
15 92 (1.78%) Marketing
16 90 (1.74%) Telecoms
17 81 (1.57%) Investment Banking
18 74 (1.43%) Back Office
19 63 (1.22%) Law
20 55 (1.06%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 725 (14.02%) Analyst
2 574 (11.10%) Developer
3 434 (8.39%) Senior
4 361 (6.98%) Architect
5 328 (6.34%) Lead
6 288 (5.57%) Business Analyst
7 255 (4.93%) Consultant
8 232 (4.48%) Data Engineer
9 186 (3.60%) Project Manager
10 152 (2.94%) IT Support
11 149 (2.88%) Support Engineer
12 122 (2.36%) Data Analyst
13 109 (2.11%) Administrator
14 108 (2.09%) IT Engineer
15 102 (1.97%) Solutions Architect
16 98 (1.89%) Java Developer
17 97 (1.88%) Software Engineer
18 94 (1.82%) Network Engineer
19 88 (1.70%) Infrastructure Engineer
20 80 (1.55%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 306 (5.92%) REST
2 155 (3.00%) .NET
3 143 (2.76%) Kafka
4 139 (2.69%) SOAP
5 132 (2.55%) React
6 127 (2.46%) RESTful
7 123 (2.38%) CSS
7 123 (2.38%) Spring
8 113 (2.18%) HTML
9 104 (2.01%) Middleware
10 95 (1.84%) JSON
11 91 (1.76%) AngularJS
11 91 (1.76%) LDAP
12 90 (1.74%) Node.js
12 90 (1.74%) Spring Boot
13 86 (1.66%) XML
14 75 (1.45%) PySpark
15 62 (1.20%) Web Services
16 55 (1.06%) OAuth
17 47 (0.91%) OpenTelemetry
Miscellaneous
1 255 (4.93%) Product Ownership
2 230 (4.45%) Onboarding
3 207 (4.00%) Cloud Native
4 206 (3.98%) Data Centre
5 168 (3.25%) Self-Motivation
6 148 (2.86%) Analytical Mindset
7 138 (2.67%) Management Information System
8 128 (2.47%) Legacy Systems
9 120 (2.32%) Distributed Systems
10 119 (2.30%) Data Protection Act
11 115 (2.22%) Enterprise Software
12 113 (2.18%) Virtual Team
13 95 (1.84%) Data Structures
14 71 (1.37%) Security Posture
15 70 (1.35%) Driving Licence
16 63 (1.22%) Algorithms
17 58 (1.12%) AI Agents
18 51 (0.99%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 47 (0.91%) Mobile App
20 46 (0.89%) Derivative
Operating Systems
1 619 (11.97%) Windows
2 286 (5.53%) Linux
3 114 (2.20%) Windows 10
3 114 (2.20%) Windows Server
4 104 (2.01%) Unix
5 89 (1.72%) Android
6 86 (1.66%) Apple iOS
7 85 (1.64%) Mac OS
8 53 (1.02%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 21 (0.41%) Ubuntu
10 14 (0.27%) CentOS
10 14 (0.27%) VMS
11 13 (0.25%) Windows Server 2019
12 10 (0.19%) zOS
13 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
15 6 (0.12%) Debian
15 6 (0.12%) Solaris
16 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.077%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,374 (26.56%) Agile
2 841 (16.26%) CI/CD
3 828 (16.01%) Continuous Improvement
4 772 (14.92%) Stakeholder Management
5 765 (14.79%) DevOps
6 581 (11.23%) AI
7 573 (11.08%) Decision-Making
8 555 (10.73%) Migration
9 546 (10.55%) Analytics
10 468 (9.05%) Customer Service
11 463 (8.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 440 (8.51%) ITIL
13 438 (8.47%) Data Modelling
14 425 (8.22%) Project Management
15 417 (8.06%) Validation
16 398 (7.69%) Business Intelligence
17 378 (7.31%) Test Automation
18 354 (6.84%) Scrum
19 340 (6.57%) Change Management
20 309 (5.97%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 917 (17.73%) Python
2 898 (17.36%) SQL
3 400 (7.73%) Java
4 320 (6.19%) PowerShell
5 261 (5.05%) JavaScript
6 194 (3.75%) C#
7 136 (2.63%) TypeScript
8 113 (2.18%) Bash
9 74 (1.43%) C++
10 71 (1.37%) PL/SQL
11 55 (1.06%) Shell Script
12 44 (0.85%) Go
13 37 (0.72%) C
13 37 (0.72%) R
14 35 (0.68%) Perl
14 35 (0.68%) T-SQL
15 34 (0.66%) Bicep
16 33 (0.64%) Apex Code
17 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 29 (0.56%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,094 (21.15%) Security Cleared
2 745 (14.40%) SC Cleared
3 630 (12.18%) Degree
4 195 (3.77%) Computer Science Degree
5 187 (3.61%) DV Cleared
6 161 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 140 (2.71%) Cisco Certification
8 132 (2.55%) Microsoft Certification
9 94 (1.82%) CISSP
10 84 (1.62%) PMP
11 78 (1.51%) CCNA
12 77 (1.49%) PMI Certification
13 75 (1.45%) A+ Certification
14 72 (1.39%) Master's Degree
15 67 (1.30%) Network+ Certification
16 64 (1.24%) Azure Certification
17 63 (1.22%) CISM
18 58 (1.12%) MCSE
19 44 (0.85%) CCNP
20 40 (0.77%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 340 (6.57%) Data Quality
2 270 (5.22%) QA
3 148 (2.86%) GDPR
4 119 (2.30%) Accessibility
5 94 (1.82%) SLA
6 92 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.64%) PMO
8 74 (1.43%) NIST
9 54 (1.04%) GRC
10 28 (0.54%) WCAG
11 27 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
12 26 (0.50%) PCI DSS
13 24 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 18 (0.35%) ISO 20022
15 16 (0.31%) COBIT
16 15 (0.29%) NCSC
17 14 (0.27%) PSD2
18 13 (0.25%) Cyber Essentials
19 12 (0.23%) IFRS
19 12 (0.23%) ISO 8583
System Software
1 388 (7.50%) Active Directory
2 316 (6.11%) Docker
3 106 (2.05%) VMware Infrastructure
4 42 (0.81%) vSphere
5 37 (0.72%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.64%) Hyper-V
7 29 (0.56%) VMware ESXi
8 26 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.41%) Firmware
9 21 (0.41%) Virtual Machines
10 18 (0.35%) vCloud
11 11 (0.21%) Squid
12 7 (0.14%) IAG
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle RAC
13 4 (0.077%) ACF2
13 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
13 4 (0.077%) NFS
13 4 (0.077%) RACF
13 4 (0.077%) Snort
14 3 (0.058%) SRDF
Systems Management
1 390 (7.54%) Kubernetes
2 269 (5.20%) Terraform
3 172 (3.32%) Ansible
4 134 (2.59%) Microsoft Intune
5 110 (2.13%) Grafana
6 93 (1.80%) Prometheus
7 77 (1.49%) SCCM
8 46 (0.89%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.81%) FortiGate
9 42 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
10 26 (0.50%) Kibana
11 23 (0.44%) Control-M
12 22 (0.43%) Nessus
13 21 (0.41%) Argo
13 21 (0.41%) Puppet
14 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
15 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 15 (0.29%) SCOM
16 12 (0.23%) WSUS
17 11 (0.21%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 958 (18.52%) Microsoft
2 330 (6.38%) Oracle
3 302 (5.84%) SAP
4 264 (5.10%) ServiceNow
5 177 (3.42%) VMware
6 147 (2.84%) Google
7 145 (2.80%) Databricks
8 128 (2.47%) Splunk
9 127 (2.46%) Cisco
10 114 (2.20%) Salesforce
11 81 (1.57%) Dell
12 70 (1.35%) CyberArk
13 67 (1.30%) Workday
14 63 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
14 63 (1.22%) Red Hat
15 62 (1.20%) Adobe
16 49 (0.95%) Citrix
17 47 (0.91%) F5
17 47 (0.91%) HP
17 47 (0.91%) Palo Alto