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

6 months to
25 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 5 10
Rank change year-on-year -7 +5 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,175 4,944 4,633
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.69% 17.17% 10.87%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.67% 18.86% 12.66%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,037 3,092 2,824
10th Percentile £265 £250 £250
25th Percentile £390 £388 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £500 £500
Median % change year-on-year -1.60% - -4.76%
75th Percentile £594 £600 £625
90th Percentile £720 £700 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £470 £471 £475
% change year-on-year -0.33% -0.83% -3.06%
Number of hourly rates quoted 368 242 424
10th Percentile £13.33 £14.20 £11.07
25th Percentile £14.64 £15.58 £13.85
Median hourly rate £21.00 £22.14 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -5.15% +36.41% -67.54%
75th Percentile £42.38 £41.00 £35.00
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.00 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £18.50 £20.87 £15.00
% change year-on-year -11.36% +39.13% -70.00%

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 40,852 26,213 36,586
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.38% 91.03% 85.87%
Number of daily rates quoted 25,586 16,831 23,574
10th Percentile £325 £303 £300
25th Percentile £413 £409 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £510 £513 £525
Median % change year-on-year -0.49% -2.38% -4.55%
75th Percentile £613 £625 £638
90th Percentile £725 £738 £750
UK excluding London median daily rate £498 £475 £500
% change year-on-year +4.74% -5.00% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 2,418 1,066 2,483
10th Percentile £14.68 £14.20 £12.75
25th Percentile £19.85 £18.13 £16.00
Median hourly rate £42.13 £27.59 £36.05
Median % change year-on-year +52.71% -23.47% -0.22%
75th Percentile £67.50 £58.73 £60.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £75.00 £72.50
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.69 £25.15 £38.00
% change year-on-year +73.72% -33.82% +8.57%

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 25 May 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 25 May 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 25 May 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 4,429 £500 - 3,099
UK excluding London -5 2,782 £470 -0.33% 2,421
London -11 1,859 £520 -0.14% 1,029
Work from Home -3 1,470 £475 -5.00% 1,341
North of England -8 741 £450 -7.46% 642
South East -7 640 £495 -1.00% 716
Midlands -8 493 £469 +6.71% 401
North West -8 350 £425 -13.27% 351
Yorkshire -6 348 £470 -1.05% 225
West Midlands -10 344 £475 +2.98% 253
South West -2 330 £500 -3.61% 279
Scotland -1 268 £438 -5.91% 109
East of England -3 236 £450 -6.00% 245
East Midlands -1 148 £445 +19.16% 149
Wales -3 71 £400 +6.67% 51
North East -11 51 £425 -5.56% 77
Northern Ireland -4 26 £447 +9.69% 43
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
1 215 (4.15%) Confluence
2 152 (2.94%) SharePoint
3 84 (1.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 76 (1.47%) Apache Spark
5 50 (0.97%) Apache
6 47 (0.91%) Apache Airflow
7 45 (0.87%) SAS
8 30 (0.58%) CMS
9 21 (0.41%) Oracle Workflow
10 13 (0.25%) nginx
11 10 (0.19%) ArcGIS
11 10 (0.19%) WebLogic
12 9 (0.17%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 8 (0.15%) Tomcat
14 7 (0.14%) Camunda
14 7 (0.14%) CICS
14 7 (0.14%) Oracle SOA Suite
14 7 (0.14%) Sitecore CMS
15 6 (0.12%) Oracle Self-Service HR
16 5 (0.097%) Jupyter
Applications
1 297 (5.74%) Microsoft Excel
2 221 (4.27%) Microsoft Office
3 109 (2.11%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 75 (1.45%) Microsoft Project
5 73 (1.41%) MS Visio
6 31 (0.60%) Spreadsheet
7 24 (0.46%) Chatbot
8 14 (0.27%) Adobe Creative Suite
9 11 (0.21%) Sketch
10 9 (0.17%) CATIA
11 8 (0.15%) AutoCAD
12 7 (0.14%) Trello
13 6 (0.12%) Adobe XD
13 6 (0.12%) Photoshop
13 6 (0.12%) Revit
14 5 (0.097%) Maya
15 4 (0.077%) Acrobat
15 4 (0.077%) CPLEX
16 3 (0.058%) LaTeX
16 3 (0.058%) Oracle Smart View
Business Applications
1 125 (2.42%) SAP S/4HANA
2 34 (0.66%) Dynamics CRM
3 22 (0.43%) Oracle EBS
4 21 (0.41%) Aladdin
5 16 (0.31%) Oracle ERP
5 16 (0.31%) Payment Gateway
5 16 (0.31%) Remedy ITSM
6 14 (0.27%) Oracle Payables
7 13 (0.25%) SAP GRC
7 13 (0.25%) Sparx Enterprise Architect
7 13 (0.25%) Teamcenter
7 13 (0.25%) Workday HCM
8 12 (0.23%) NEC Housing
8 12 (0.23%) SAP SD
9 10 (0.19%) Oracle Assets
10 9 (0.17%) iTrent
10 9 (0.17%) SAP FI
11 8 (0.15%) NetSuite
11 8 (0.15%) Shopify
12 7 (0.14%) Oracle General Ledger
Cloud Services
1 1,036 (20.02%) Azure
2 767 (14.82%) AWS
3 394 (7.61%) Power Platform
4 349 (6.74%) Microsoft 365
5 319 (6.16%) GCP
6 236 (4.56%) Azure DevOps
7 204 (3.94%) GitHub
8 159 (3.07%) Entra ID
9 137 (2.65%) Serverless
10 120 (2.32%) SaaS
11 101 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
12 81 (1.57%) Amazon S3
13 79 (1.53%) Dynamics 365
14 72 (1.39%) AWS Lambda
14 72 (1.39%) Snowflake
15 71 (1.37%) OpenShift
16 70 (1.35%) Power Automate
17 67 (1.29%) Azure Data Factory
18 60 (1.16%) PowerApps
19 49 (0.95%) PaaS
Communications & Networking
1 193 (3.73%) DNS
2 166 (3.21%) Firewall
3 117 (2.26%) TCP/IP
4 108 (2.09%) VPN
5 106 (2.05%) WAN
6 104 (2.01%) DHCP
7 86 (1.66%) Network Security
8 83 (1.60%) SAN
9 79 (1.53%) LAN
10 68 (1.31%) Wi-Fi
11 49 (0.95%) VLAN
12 48 (0.93%) BGP
13 42 (0.81%) OSPF
14 40 (0.77%) SD-WAN
15 31 (0.60%) VoIP
15 31 (0.60%) Wireless
16 27 (0.52%) VXLAN
17 24 (0.46%) MPLS
18 23 (0.44%) Internet
19 21 (0.41%) NAS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 309 (5.97%) Power BI
2 198 (3.83%) SQL Server
3 158 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 130 (2.51%) Relational Database
5 129 (2.49%) PostgreSQL
6 109 (2.11%) Metadata
7 95 (1.84%) MongoDB
8 87 (1.68%) Tableau
9 82 (1.58%) NoSQL
10 79 (1.53%) Data Lake
11 77 (1.49%) Big Data
12 58 (1.12%) Oracle Reports
13 52 (1.00%) MySQL
14 49 (0.95%) Oracle Database
14 49 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 40 (0.77%) Hadoop
16 28 (0.54%) Delta Lake
16 28 (0.54%) Power Query
17 27 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
17 27 (0.52%) Azure SQL Database
Development Applications
1 488 (9.43%) JIRA
2 288 (5.57%) Git
3 182 (3.52%) Jenkins
4 123 (2.38%) GitLab
5 67 (1.29%) Selenium
6 39 (0.75%) Postman
7 31 (0.60%) REST Assured
8 29 (0.56%) Cucumber
9 23 (0.44%) Bitbucket
9 23 (0.44%) Cypress.io
9 23 (0.44%) JUnit
10 20 (0.39%) JMeter
11 17 (0.33%) SonarQube
11 17 (0.33%) Sonatype Nexus
11 17 (0.33%) WebDriver
12 16 (0.31%) Mockito
13 13 (0.25%) Gatling
13 13 (0.25%) Maven
13 13 (0.25%) SpecFlow
13 13 (0.25%) Zephyr
General
1 2,649 (51.19%) Social Skills
2 1,993 (38.51%) Analytical Skills
3 1,198 (23.15%) Finance
4 486 (9.39%) Public Sector
5 398 (7.69%) Banking
6 217 (4.19%) Organisational Skills
7 184 (3.56%) Retail
8 177 (3.42%) Documentation Skills
9 150 (2.90%) Legal
10 115 (2.22%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 112 (2.16%) Influencing Skills
11 112 (2.16%) Presentation Skills
12 99 (1.91%) Front Office
13 97 (1.87%) Manufacturing
14 93 (1.80%) Telecoms
15 88 (1.70%) Marketing
16 84 (1.62%) Investment Banking
17 64 (1.24%) Back Office
18 61 (1.18%) Law
19 52 (1.00%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 723 (13.97%) Analyst
2 607 (11.73%) Developer
3 440 (8.50%) Senior
4 349 (6.74%) Architect
5 318 (6.14%) Lead
6 286 (5.53%) Business Analyst
7 260 (5.02%) Consultant
8 231 (4.46%) Data Engineer
9 194 (3.75%) Project Manager
10 141 (2.72%) Support Engineer
11 136 (2.63%) IT Support
12 130 (2.51%) Data Analyst
13 104 (2.01%) Java Developer
14 102 (1.97%) IT Engineer
15 100 (1.93%) Administrator
16 98 (1.89%) Software Engineer
17 95 (1.84%) Solutions Architect
18 93 (1.80%) Infrastructure Engineer
18 93 (1.80%) Network Engineer
19 77 (1.49%) Technical Support
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 294 (5.68%) REST
2 148 (2.86%) Kafka
3 145 (2.80%) .NET
4 136 (2.63%) SOAP
5 133 (2.57%) React
6 132 (2.55%) Spring
7 130 (2.51%) RESTful
8 117 (2.26%) CSS
9 110 (2.13%) HTML
10 99 (1.91%) Middleware
11 98 (1.89%) Node.js
11 98 (1.89%) Spring Boot
12 95 (1.84%) AngularJS
12 95 (1.84%) JSON
13 91 (1.76%) LDAP
14 87 (1.68%) XML
15 71 (1.37%) PySpark
16 59 (1.14%) OAuth
17 55 (1.06%) Web Services
18 51 (0.99%) Oracle Fusion
Miscellaneous
1 259 (5.00%) Product Ownership
2 224 (4.33%) Onboarding
3 208 (4.02%) Data Centre
4 197 (3.81%) Cloud Native
5 164 (3.17%) Self-Motivation
6 146 (2.82%) Analytical Mindset
7 138 (2.67%) Management Information System
8 121 (2.34%) Legacy Systems
9 117 (2.26%) Distributed Systems
10 116 (2.24%) Data Protection Act
11 113 (2.18%) Virtual Team
12 100 (1.93%) Enterprise Software
13 99 (1.91%) Data Structures
14 71 (1.37%) Driving Licence
15 68 (1.31%) Security Posture
16 60 (1.16%) Algorithms
17 58 (1.12%) AI Agents
18 54 (1.04%) Mobile App
19 48 (0.93%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
20 47 (0.91%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 600 (11.59%) Windows
2 297 (5.74%) Linux
3 116 (2.24%) Windows Server
4 112 (2.16%) Windows 10
5 103 (1.99%) Unix
6 88 (1.70%) Android
7 86 (1.66%) Apple iOS
8 78 (1.51%) Mac OS
9 52 (1.00%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 21 (0.41%) Ubuntu
11 16 (0.31%) VMS
12 14 (0.27%) CentOS
12 14 (0.27%) Windows Server 2019
13 9 (0.17%) Windows 7
14 8 (0.15%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.15%) zOS
15 7 (0.14%) Debian
16 5 (0.097%) Solaris
16 5 (0.097%) Windows Server 2012
17 4 (0.077%) Rocky
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,388 (26.82%) Agile
2 838 (16.19%) CI/CD
3 798 (15.42%) Continuous Improvement
4 765 (14.78%) DevOps
5 743 (14.36%) Stakeholder Management
6 584 (11.29%) Decision-Making
7 578 (11.17%) AI
8 558 (10.78%) Migration
9 549 (10.61%) Analytics
10 444 (8.58%) Project Management
11 440 (8.50%) Customer Service
11 440 (8.50%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 439 (8.48%) Data Modelling
13 422 (8.15%) Validation
14 420 (8.12%) ITIL
15 405 (7.83%) Business Intelligence
16 379 (7.32%) Test Automation
17 356 (6.88%) Change Management
18 352 (6.80%) Scrum
19 311 (6.01%) Computer Science
Programming Languages
1 913 (17.64%) Python
2 887 (17.14%) SQL
3 408 (7.88%) Java
4 312 (6.03%) PowerShell
5 262 (5.06%) JavaScript
6 196 (3.79%) C#
7 150 (2.90%) TypeScript
8 115 (2.22%) Bash
9 75 (1.45%) C++
10 73 (1.41%) PL/SQL
11 56 (1.08%) Shell Script
12 45 (0.87%) Go
13 42 (0.81%) R
14 38 (0.73%) Bicep
14 38 (0.73%) C
15 34 (0.66%) Apex Code
15 34 (0.66%) Perl
16 33 (0.64%) T-SQL
17 31 (0.60%) Data Analysis Expressions
18 30 (0.58%) Scala
Qualifications
1 1,114 (21.53%) Security Cleared
2 759 (14.67%) SC Cleared
3 625 (12.08%) Degree
4 198 (3.83%) DV Cleared
5 191 (3.69%) Computer Science Degree
6 161 (3.11%) BPSS Clearance
7 138 (2.67%) Cisco Certification
8 129 (2.49%) Microsoft Certification
9 91 (1.76%) CISSP
10 82 (1.58%) PMP
11 78 (1.51%) CCNA
12 75 (1.45%) PMI Certification
13 74 (1.43%) A+ Certification
14 70 (1.35%) Master's Degree
15 68 (1.31%) Network+ Certification
16 62 (1.20%) Azure Certification
17 60 (1.16%) CISM
18 58 (1.12%) MCSE
19 44 (0.85%) CCNP
20 35 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 344 (6.65%) Data Quality
2 272 (5.26%) QA
3 144 (2.78%) GDPR
4 111 (2.14%) Accessibility
5 92 (1.78%) ISO/IEC 27001
6 85 (1.64%) PMO
7 84 (1.62%) SLA
8 76 (1.47%) NIST
9 53 (1.02%) GRC
10 27 (0.52%) Actionable Recommendations
10 27 (0.52%) PCI DSS
10 27 (0.52%) WCAG
11 24 (0.46%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 19 (0.37%) ISO 20022
13 15 (0.29%) IFRS
13 15 (0.29%) NCSC
13 15 (0.29%) PSD2
14 14 (0.27%) Cyber Essentials
15 13 (0.25%) HIPAA
15 13 (0.25%) HL7
System Software
1 383 (7.40%) Active Directory
2 320 (6.18%) Docker
3 109 (2.11%) VMware Infrastructure
4 41 (0.79%) vSphere
5 37 (0.71%) VMware NSX
6 35 (0.68%) Hyper-V
7 26 (0.50%) VMware ESXi
8 24 (0.46%) Virtual Desktop
9 21 (0.41%) Firmware
10 19 (0.37%) Virtual Machines
11 18 (0.35%) vCloud
12 11 (0.21%) Squid
13 8 (0.15%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.12%) IAG
15 4 (0.077%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.077%) RACF
15 4 (0.077%) Snort
16 3 (0.058%) ACF2
16 3 (0.058%) NFS
16 3 (0.058%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 394 (7.61%) Kubernetes
2 271 (5.24%) Terraform
3 178 (3.44%) Ansible
4 125 (2.42%) Microsoft Intune
5 111 (2.14%) Grafana
6 94 (1.82%) Prometheus
7 78 (1.51%) SCCM
8 45 (0.87%) vCenter Server
9 42 (0.81%) FortiGate
10 38 (0.73%) Single Sign-On
11 28 (0.54%) Kibana
12 24 (0.46%) Puppet
13 23 (0.44%) Control-M
14 22 (0.43%) Nessus
15 20 (0.39%) Argo
16 17 (0.33%) IBM Guardium
17 15 (0.29%) Active Directory Federation Services
17 15 (0.29%) SCOM
18 12 (0.23%) WSUS
19 9 (0.17%) Jamf Pro
Vendors
1 944 (18.24%) Microsoft
2 339 (6.55%) Oracle
3 300 (5.80%) SAP
4 244 (4.71%) ServiceNow
5 185 (3.57%) VMware
6 145 (2.80%) Databricks
7 141 (2.72%) Google
8 128 (2.47%) Cisco
9 127 (2.45%) Splunk
10 111 (2.14%) Salesforce
11 84 (1.62%) Dell
12 68 (1.31%) CyberArk
13 63 (1.22%) BeyondTrust
13 63 (1.22%) Red Hat
13 63 (1.22%) Workday
14 55 (1.06%) Adobe
15 48 (0.93%) F5
15 48 (0.93%) HP
16 47 (0.91%) Citrix
16 47 (0.91%) Palo Alto