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

6 months to
14 Apr 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 9 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -4 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,411 4,890 4,747
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 11.83% 16.70% 10.91%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.91% 18.43% 12.63%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,283 3,066 2,930
10th Percentile £280 £250 £213
25th Percentile £393 £399 £381
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £480 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.00% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £625
90th Percentile £707 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £470 £475
% change year-on-year +0.11% -1.16% -5.00%
Number of hourly rates quoted 333 236 406
10th Percentile £13.00 £14.52 £11.04
25th Percentile £14.96 £16.90 £13.55
Median hourly rate £21.25 £24.09 £17.50
Median % change year-on-year -11.79% +37.66% -59.71%
75th Percentile £47.75 £41.31 £36.69
90th Percentile £74.26 £68.13 £64.38
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.17 £21.68 £15.00
% change year-on-year -16.19% +44.53% -51.61%

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 38,904 26,533 37,594
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 85.08% 90.62% 86.38%
Number of daily rates quoted 24,602 17,197 24,340
10th Percentile £315 £308 £300
25th Percentile £413 £413 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £525 £525
Median % change year-on-year -4.76% - -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £635 £638
90th Percentile £725 £744 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £487 £488 £500
% change year-on-year -0.10% -2.50% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,316 1,022 2,384
10th Percentile £14.98 £14.99 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.38 £18.86 £15.88
Median hourly rate £37.00 £30.79 £33.07
Median % change year-on-year +20.16% -6.87% -8.79%
75th Percentile £65.00 £62.88 £57.50
90th Percentile £78.13 £75.00 £71.25
UK excluding London median hourly rate £37.00 £29.00 £33.03
% change year-on-year +27.59% -12.21% -8.24%

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 14 April 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 14 April 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 14 April 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 -4 4,645 £492 -1.60% 3,328
UK excluding London -5 2,819 £470 +0.11% 2,645
London -8 2,018 £510 -2.86% 1,076
Work from Home 0 1,535 £475 -5.00% 1,310
North of England -5 780 £450 -8.07% 638
South East -5 666 £493 -1.50% 789
Midlands -3 515 £450 +0.22% 482
North West -5 386 £425 -13.27% 334
West Midlands -5 369 £475 +2.70% 279
Yorkshire -4 348 £468 -1.47% 213
South West -2 316 £513 +2.50% 301
Scotland +1 252 £425 -5.56% 138
East of England -3 215 £450 - 286
East Midlands -1 147 £418 +12.91% 204
Wales -2 71 £390 +17.76% 70
North East -3 55 £438 -14.22% 103
Northern Ireland 0 27 £430 +26.47% 25
Channel Islands -5 1 - - 2

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
1 226 (4.18%) Confluence
2 152 (2.81%) SharePoint
3 104 (1.92%) Microsoft Exchange
4 88 (1.63%) Apache Spark
5 67 (1.24%) SAS
6 64 (1.18%) Apache
7 46 (0.85%) Apache Airflow
8 33 (0.61%) CMS
9 19 (0.35%) Oracle Workflow
10 16 (0.30%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.24%) nginx
12 10 (0.18%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Jupyter
14 7 (0.13%) Anypoint
14 7 (0.13%) ArcGIS
14 7 (0.13%) Camunda
14 7 (0.13%) JBoss
15 6 (0.11%) CICS
15 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 6 (0.11%) Tomcat
Applications
1 310 (5.73%) Microsoft Excel
2 226 (4.18%) Microsoft Office
3 120 (2.22%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 83 (1.53%) Microsoft Project
5 81 (1.50%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.57%) Spreadsheet
7 25 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 10 (0.18%) Sketch
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 9 (0.17%) Adobe XD
10 7 (0.13%) CATIA
10 7 (0.13%) Photoshop
10 7 (0.13%) Trello
11 5 (0.092%) Acrobat
11 5 (0.092%) Maya
12 4 (0.074%) AutoCAD
12 4 (0.074%) InDesign
12 4 (0.074%) InVision
12 4 (0.074%) Zeplin
13 3 (0.055%) LaTeX
Business Applications
1 102 (1.89%) SAP S/4HANA
2 37 (0.68%) Dynamics CRM
3 23 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 20 (0.37%) Aladdin
4 20 (0.37%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.30%) Oracle ERP
6 15 (0.28%) Oracle Payables
6 15 (0.28%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 14 (0.26%) NEC Housing
7 14 (0.26%) SAP ERP
7 14 (0.26%) Workday HCM
8 13 (0.24%) Remedy ITSM
9 10 (0.18%) iTrent
9 10 (0.18%) NetSuite
9 10 (0.18%) Oracle Assets
9 10 (0.18%) SAP SD
9 10 (0.18%) Teamcenter
10 9 (0.17%) Oracle Receivables
11 8 (0.15%) SAP HCM
11 8 (0.15%) Shopify
Cloud Services
1 1,127 (20.83%) Azure
2 854 (15.78%) AWS
3 391 (7.23%) Power Platform
4 373 (6.89%) GCP
5 346 (6.39%) Microsoft 365
6 250 (4.62%) Azure DevOps
7 236 (4.36%) GitHub
8 173 (3.20%) Serverless
9 171 (3.16%) Entra ID
10 139 (2.57%) SaaS
11 125 (2.31%) GitHub Actions
12 109 (2.01%) Amazon S3
13 102 (1.89%) AWS Lambda
14 92 (1.70%) OpenShift
15 78 (1.44%) Snowflake
16 76 (1.40%) Dynamics 365
17 74 (1.37%) Azure Data Factory
17 74 (1.37%) Power Automate
18 62 (1.15%) PowerApps
19 59 (1.09%) Amazon EC2
Communications & Networking
1 202 (3.73%) Firewall
2 197 (3.64%) DNS
3 123 (2.27%) TCP/IP
4 118 (2.18%) Network Security
5 113 (2.09%) VPN
6 108 (2.00%) WAN
7 104 (1.92%) DHCP
8 86 (1.59%) LAN
9 68 (1.26%) SAN
10 64 (1.18%) Wi-Fi
11 54 (1.00%) BGP
12 50 (0.92%) VLAN
13 40 (0.74%) OSPF
14 37 (0.68%) SD-WAN
14 37 (0.68%) VoIP
15 28 (0.52%) Internet
15 28 (0.52%) MPLS
15 28 (0.52%) Wireless
16 22 (0.41%) VXLAN
17 21 (0.39%) Junos
Database & Business Intelligence
1 311 (5.75%) Power BI
2 195 (3.60%) SQL Server
3 162 (2.99%) Data Warehouse
4 147 (2.72%) PostgreSQL
4 147 (2.72%) Relational Database
5 111 (2.05%) Metadata
6 94 (1.74%) NoSQL
7 90 (1.66%) MongoDB
8 88 (1.63%) Big Data
9 86 (1.59%) Tableau
10 81 (1.50%) Data Lake
11 69 (1.28%) MySQL
12 67 (1.24%) Oracle Database
13 63 (1.16%) Oracle Reports
14 47 (0.87%) Hadoop
15 45 (0.83%) SQL Server Integration Services
16 39 (0.72%) Amazon RDS
17 36 (0.67%) DynamoDB
17 36 (0.67%) Pentaho
18 30 (0.55%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 518 (9.57%) JIRA
2 350 (6.47%) Git
3 249 (4.60%) Jenkins
4 163 (3.01%) GitLab
5 84 (1.55%) Selenium
6 50 (0.92%) JUnit
7 41 (0.76%) Postman
8 32 (0.59%) Cucumber
9 29 (0.54%) Bitbucket
10 28 (0.52%) REST Assured
11 23 (0.43%) Cypress.io
11 23 (0.43%) Maven
11 23 (0.43%) Sonatype Nexus
12 21 (0.39%) JMeter
12 21 (0.39%) Mockito
13 18 (0.33%) SonarQube
14 15 (0.28%) WebDriver
15 14 (0.26%) Artifactory
15 14 (0.26%) CircleCI
15 14 (0.26%) SpecFlow
General
1 2,868 (53.00%) Social Skills
2 2,036 (37.63%) Analytical Skills
3 1,238 (22.88%) Finance
4 538 (9.94%) Public Sector
5 419 (7.74%) Banking
6 219 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
7 189 (3.49%) Documentation Skills
8 176 (3.25%) Legal
8 176 (3.25%) Retail
9 138 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
10 133 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
11 122 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 98 (1.81%) Front Office
13 97 (1.79%) Telecoms
14 87 (1.61%) Marketing
15 84 (1.55%) Manufacturing
16 76 (1.40%) Investment Banking
17 57 (1.05%) Financial Institution
18 54 (1.00%) Military
19 52 (0.96%) Law
Job Titles
1 742 (13.71%) Analyst
2 699 (12.92%) Developer
3 477 (8.82%) Senior
4 380 (7.02%) Architect
5 345 (6.38%) Lead
6 315 (5.82%) Business Analyst
7 290 (5.36%) Consultant
8 230 (4.25%) Data Engineer
9 211 (3.90%) Project Manager
10 135 (2.49%) Support Engineer
11 134 (2.48%) Java Developer
12 127 (2.35%) IT Support
13 109 (2.01%) Data Analyst
14 107 (1.98%) Solutions Architect
15 102 (1.89%) Administrator
16 100 (1.85%) Software Engineer
17 92 (1.70%) Senior Developer
18 88 (1.63%) IT Engineer
18 88 (1.63%) Network Engineer
19 83 (1.53%) Python Developer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 349 (6.45%) REST
2 172 (3.18%) Kafka
3 160 (2.96%) RESTful
4 155 (2.86%) SOAP
5 149 (2.75%) .NET
6 147 (2.72%) Spring
7 135 (2.49%) React
8 133 (2.46%) Node.js
9 111 (2.05%) Spring Boot
10 110 (2.03%) AngularJS
10 110 (2.03%) CSS
11 108 (2.00%) HTML
12 103 (1.90%) JSON
13 99 (1.83%) LDAP
14 97 (1.79%) XML
15 91 (1.68%) Middleware
16 79 (1.46%) OAuth
17 72 (1.33%) PySpark
18 62 (1.15%) Web Services
19 60 (1.11%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 281 (5.19%) Product Ownership
2 221 (4.08%) Cloud Native
3 219 (4.05%) Onboarding
4 172 (3.18%) Data Centre
5 159 (2.94%) Management Information System
6 149 (2.75%) Self-Motivation
7 142 (2.62%) Analytical Mindset
8 112 (2.07%) Data Protection Act
8 112 (2.07%) Data Structures
9 110 (2.03%) Distributed Systems
10 107 (1.98%) Virtual Team
11 104 (1.92%) Enterprise Software
12 103 (1.90%) Legacy Systems
13 73 (1.35%) Algorithms
14 70 (1.29%) Security Posture
15 69 (1.28%) Driving Licence
16 64 (1.18%) Mobile App
17 61 (1.13%) Hybrid Cloud
18 57 (1.05%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (0.96%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 603 (11.14%) Windows
2 337 (6.23%) Linux
3 119 (2.20%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.07%) Windows 10
5 100 (1.85%) Unix
6 83 (1.53%) Android
7 75 (1.39%) Apple iOS
8 67 (1.24%) Mac OS
9 62 (1.15%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.37%) VMS
11 17 (0.31%) Ubuntu
12 12 (0.22%) CentOS
13 10 (0.18%) Windows Server 2019
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Windows Server 2012
14 8 (0.15%) zOS
15 6 (0.11%) Debian
16 4 (0.074%) Windows 8
16 4 (0.074%) Windows Server 2003
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,538 (28.42%) Agile
2 968 (17.89%) CI/CD
3 864 (15.97%) DevOps
4 815 (15.06%) Continuous Improvement
5 803 (14.84%) Stakeholder Management
6 631 (11.66%) Analytics
7 580 (10.72%) Migration
8 572 (10.57%) Decision-Making
9 547 (10.11%) AI
10 483 (8.93%) Project Management
11 472 (8.72%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 470 (8.69%) Data Modelling
13 429 (7.93%) Business Intelligence
14 428 (7.91%) Test Automation
15 426 (7.87%) Validation
16 417 (7.71%) Customer Service
17 401 (7.41%) Scrum
18 400 (7.39%) ITIL
19 389 (7.19%) Change Management
20 351 (6.49%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 1,021 (18.87%) Python
2 953 (17.61%) SQL
3 472 (8.72%) Java
4 358 (6.62%) PowerShell
5 290 (5.36%) JavaScript
6 213 (3.94%) C#
7 187 (3.46%) TypeScript
8 153 (2.83%) Bash
9 81 (1.50%) PL/SQL
10 68 (1.26%) Shell Script
11 67 (1.24%) C++
12 55 (1.02%) Go
13 44 (0.81%) Perl
14 43 (0.79%) Bicep
15 41 (0.76%) Scala
16 40 (0.74%) R
17 38 (0.70%) C
18 36 (0.67%) T-SQL
19 35 (0.65%) Apex Code
20 32 (0.59%) Ruby
Qualifications
1 1,176 (21.73%) Security Cleared
2 822 (15.19%) SC Cleared
3 666 (12.31%) Degree
4 225 (4.16%) Computer Science Degree
5 198 (3.66%) DV Cleared
6 177 (3.27%) BPSS Clearance
7 129 (2.38%) Cisco Certification
8 111 (2.05%) Microsoft Certification
9 105 (1.94%) CISSP
10 103 (1.90%) PMP
11 101 (1.87%) PMI Certification
12 88 (1.63%) Master's Degree
13 69 (1.28%) Azure Certification
14 67 (1.24%) CISM
15 63 (1.16%) CCNA
16 54 (1.00%) CCNP
17 53 (0.98%) A+ Certification
18 48 (0.89%) Network+ Certification
19 47 (0.87%) MCSE
20 43 (0.79%) AWS Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 357 (6.60%) Data Quality
2 347 (6.41%) QA
3 159 (2.94%) GDPR
4 112 (2.07%) Accessibility
5 99 (1.83%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 97 (1.79%) PMO
7 91 (1.68%) NIST
8 73 (1.35%) SLA
9 44 (0.81%) GRC
10 35 (0.65%) WCAG
11 33 (0.61%) PCI DSS
12 28 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
13 27 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
14 25 (0.46%) PSD2
15 20 (0.37%) ISO 20022
16 18 (0.33%) ISO 8583
17 16 (0.30%) HL7
18 15 (0.28%) IFRS
19 13 (0.24%) HIPAA
20 12 (0.22%) NCSC
System Software
1 418 (7.73%) Docker
2 407 (7.52%) Active Directory
3 119 (2.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 49 (0.91%) vSphere
5 40 (0.74%) VMware NSX
6 33 (0.61%) Hyper-V
7 21 (0.39%) Firmware
8 20 (0.37%) Virtual Desktop
9 17 (0.31%) Virtual Machines
10 11 (0.20%) RACF
10 11 (0.20%) VMware ESXi
11 10 (0.18%) Oracle RAC
11 10 (0.18%) Time Sharing Option
11 10 (0.18%) vCloud
12 9 (0.17%) ACF2
12 9 (0.17%) Squid
13 6 (0.11%) IAG
14 4 (0.074%) BitLocker
14 4 (0.074%) NFS
14 4 (0.074%) Snort
Systems Management
1 488 (9.02%) Kubernetes
2 314 (5.80%) Terraform
3 189 (3.49%) Ansible
4 130 (2.40%) Microsoft Intune
5 124 (2.29%) Grafana
6 97 (1.79%) Prometheus
7 83 (1.53%) SCCM
8 44 (0.81%) Single Sign-On
9 39 (0.72%) vCenter Server
10 37 (0.68%) FortiGate
11 30 (0.55%) Kibana
12 29 (0.54%) Puppet
13 27 (0.50%) Argo
14 23 (0.43%) Active Directory Federation Services
15 20 (0.37%) Control-M
15 20 (0.37%) Nessus
16 16 (0.30%) vRealize
17 14 (0.26%) IBM Guardium
18 13 (0.24%) WSUS
19 11 (0.20%) HP ALM
Vendors
1 976 (18.04%) Microsoft
2 371 (6.86%) Oracle
3 281 (5.19%) SAP
4 235 (4.34%) ServiceNow
5 205 (3.79%) VMware
6 170 (3.14%) Google
7 166 (3.07%) Databricks
8 131 (2.42%) Cisco
9 126 (2.33%) Splunk
10 118 (2.18%) Salesforce
11 79 (1.46%) Red Hat
12 74 (1.37%) CyberArk
12 74 (1.37%) Dell
13 71 (1.31%) BeyondTrust
14 61 (1.13%) Citrix
15 58 (1.07%) Workday
16 56 (1.03%) Talend
17 55 (1.02%) Adobe
18 54 (1.00%) IBM
19 49 (0.91%) Informatica