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

6 months to
27 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 5 9
Rank change year-on-year -9 +4 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 5,549 5,333 4,468
As % of all contract jobs in the UK 10.51% 16.18% 11.12%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.37% 17.90% 13.02%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,177 3,255 2,761
10th Percentile £256 £250 £250
25th Percentile £380 £375 £388
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £490 £500
Median % change year-on-year +0.41% -2.00% -2.44%
75th Percentile £588 £600 £615
90th Percentile £700 £703 £725
UK excluding London median daily rate £450 £460 £475
% change year-on-year -2.01% -3.26% -1.04%
Number of hourly rates quoted 460 315 316
10th Percentile £13.45 £14.20 £11.75
25th Percentile £15.00 £15.47 £14.16
Median hourly rate £19.67 £21.25 £16.23
Median % change year-on-year -7.46% +30.93% -69.09%
75th Percentile £42.00 £39.22 £31.36
90th Percentile £74.00 £65.25 £61.60
UK excluding London median hourly rate £19.33 £18.85 £16.00
% change year-on-year +2.55% +17.81% -70.01%

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 44,856 29,798 34,328
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the UK 84.96% 90.42% 85.47%
Number of daily rates quoted 27,798 18,719 22,071
10th Percentile £325 £300 £308
25th Percentile £419 £404 £413
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £520 £500 £525
Median % change year-on-year +4.00% -4.76% -3.67%
75th Percentile £625 £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 2,670 1,616 2,026
10th Percentile £14.82 £14.20 £13.56
25th Percentile £20.02 £17.33 £17.55
Median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £40.00
Median % change year-on-year +74.79% -37.13% -5.88%
75th Percentile £68.38 £50.00 £63.75
90th Percentile £82.38 £68.75 £73.75
UK excluding London median hourly rate £43.96 £23.82 £40.00
% change year-on-year +84.59% -40.46% -

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 27 July 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 27 July 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 27 July 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 4,774 £495 - 3,522
UK excluding London -5 2,990 £450 -2.01% 2,658
London -12 2,020 £519 +3.85% 1,316
Work from Home -7 1,548 £490 -2.00% 1,336
South East -5 762 £488 -2.50% 813
North of England -9 741 £450 -5.26% 671
Midlands -6 546 £450 +5.88% 452
West Midlands -9 398 £450 - 256
North West -10 361 £450 -7.98% 335
South West -1 337 £500 +5.26% 329
Yorkshire -7 328 £450 -5.26% 229
Scotland -4 289 £429 -4.67% 103
East of England -2 258 £450 -4.26% 282
East Midlands -1 146 £470 +25.33% 196
Wales -4 65 £475 +26.67% 63
North East -16 58 £370 -17.78% 117
Northern Ireland -5 23 £380 -24.00% 35

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
1 238 (4.29%) Confluence
2 201 (3.62%) SharePoint
3 93 (1.68%) Microsoft Exchange
4 73 (1.32%) Apache Spark
5 49 (0.88%) Apache Airflow
6 46 (0.83%) Apache
7 38 (0.68%) SAS
8 33 (0.59%) CMS
9 31 (0.56%) Oracle Workflow
10 19 (0.34%) WebLogic
11 13 (0.23%) WebSphere
12 10 (0.18%) CICS
12 10 (0.18%) Jupyter
13 9 (0.16%) Adobe Experience Manager
13 9 (0.16%) ArcGIS
14 6 (0.11%) Appian
14 6 (0.11%) Camunda
14 6 (0.11%) nginx
14 6 (0.11%) Oracle Self-Service HR
15 5 (0.090%) IIS
Applications
1 296 (5.33%) Microsoft Excel
2 248 (4.47%) Microsoft Office
3 106 (1.91%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 82 (1.48%) MS Visio
5 68 (1.23%) Microsoft Project
6 32 (0.58%) Spreadsheet
7 28 (0.50%) Adobe Creative Suite
8 26 (0.47%) Chatbot
9 15 (0.27%) Sketch
10 14 (0.25%) AutoCAD
11 11 (0.20%) Revit
12 10 (0.18%) CATIA
12 10 (0.18%) Trello
13 8 (0.14%) CPLEX
14 6 (0.11%) Adobe After Effects
14 6 (0.11%) Final Cut Pro
14 6 (0.11%) Photoshop
15 5 (0.090%) Maya
16 4 (0.072%) Adobe XD
17 3 (0.054%) Acrobat
Business Applications
1 144 (2.60%) SAP S/4HANA
2 49 (0.88%) Dynamics CRM
3 37 (0.67%) Oracle EBS
4 26 (0.47%) NetSuite
5 25 (0.45%) Remedy ITSM
6 23 (0.41%) Workday HCM
7 21 (0.38%) SAP GRC
8 17 (0.31%) Aladdin
9 14 (0.25%) Oracle Payables
9 14 (0.25%) SAP SD
10 13 (0.23%) iTrent
11 12 (0.22%) Salesforce CRM
11 12 (0.22%) SAP HCM
12 11 (0.20%) Teamcenter
13 10 (0.18%) Finacle
13 10 (0.18%) Oracle ERP
14 9 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
14 9 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
14 9 (0.16%) Payment Gateway
14 9 (0.16%) SAP ERP
Cloud Services
1 1,069 (19.26%) Azure
2 822 (14.81%) AWS
3 423 (7.62%) Power Platform
4 411 (7.41%) Microsoft 365
5 318 (5.73%) GCP
6 252 (4.54%) Azure DevOps
7 209 (3.77%) Entra ID
8 203 (3.66%) GitHub
9 148 (2.67%) SaaS
10 127 (2.29%) Serverless
11 103 (1.86%) GitHub Actions
12 86 (1.55%) Power Automate
13 83 (1.50%) Amazon S3
14 78 (1.41%) Dynamics 365
15 75 (1.35%) AWS Lambda
16 71 (1.28%) PowerApps
17 67 (1.21%) OpenShift
18 61 (1.10%) Snowflake
19 59 (1.06%) Azure Data Factory
19 59 (1.06%) Microsoft Copilot
Communications & Networking
1 224 (4.04%) DNS
2 192 (3.46%) Firewall
3 141 (2.54%) VPN
4 132 (2.38%) TCP/IP
5 131 (2.36%) DHCP
6 119 (2.14%) WAN
7 100 (1.80%) LAN
8 97 (1.75%) Network Security
9 83 (1.50%) Wi-Fi
10 82 (1.48%) SAN
11 61 (1.10%) VLAN
12 54 (0.97%) BGP
13 53 (0.96%) Wireless
14 41 (0.74%) OSPF
15 39 (0.70%) SD-WAN
16 37 (0.67%) VoIP
17 34 (0.61%) MPLS
18 30 (0.54%) Structured Cabling
19 27 (0.49%) VXLAN
20 26 (0.47%) HTTP
Database & Business Intelligence
1 329 (5.93%) Power BI
2 234 (4.22%) SQL Server
3 169 (3.05%) Data Warehouse
4 166 (2.99%) Relational Database
5 162 (2.92%) PostgreSQL
6 121 (2.18%) MongoDB
7 103 (1.86%) Metadata
8 94 (1.69%) NoSQL
9 93 (1.68%) Data Lake
10 87 (1.57%) Tableau
11 74 (1.33%) Big Data
12 63 (1.14%) MySQL
13 58 (1.05%) Oracle Database
14 51 (0.92%) SQL Server Integration Services
15 49 (0.88%) Oracle Reports
16 36 (0.65%) Db2
17 32 (0.58%) Hadoop
18 29 (0.52%) Amazon RDS
19 28 (0.50%) DynamoDB
20 26 (0.47%) BigQuery
Development Applications
1 520 (9.37%) JIRA
2 338 (6.09%) Git
3 195 (3.51%) Jenkins
4 124 (2.23%) GitLab
5 75 (1.35%) Selenium
6 41 (0.74%) Postman
7 39 (0.70%) Cypress.io
8 34 (0.61%) REST Assured
9 33 (0.59%) Gradle
10 31 (0.56%) Maven
11 30 (0.54%) Cucumber
12 26 (0.47%) Bitbucket
13 25 (0.45%) JUnit
14 20 (0.36%) Mockito
14 20 (0.36%) WebDriver
15 18 (0.32%) Atlassian Bamboo
16 16 (0.29%) JMeter
17 15 (0.27%) Zephyr
18 13 (0.23%) Gatling
18 13 (0.23%) Oracle Forms
General
1 2,867 (51.67%) Social Skills
2 2,261 (40.75%) Analytical Skills
3 1,293 (23.30%) Finance
4 581 (10.47%) Public Sector
5 427 (7.70%) Banking
6 225 (4.05%) Organisational Skills
7 205 (3.69%) Documentation Skills
8 200 (3.60%) Retail
9 170 (3.06%) Inclusion and Diversity
10 149 (2.69%) Manufacturing
11 147 (2.65%) Legal
12 145 (2.61%) Influencing Skills
13 114 (2.05%) Presentation Skills
14 112 (2.02%) Marketing
15 110 (1.98%) Front Office
16 107 (1.93%) Telecoms
17 85 (1.53%) Investment Banking
18 82 (1.48%) Back Office
19 61 (1.10%) Aerospace
20 58 (1.05%) Law
Job Titles
1 734 (13.23%) Analyst
2 690 (12.43%) Developer
3 506 (9.12%) Senior
4 414 (7.46%) Lead
5 377 (6.79%) Architect
6 264 (4.76%) Business Analyst
7 258 (4.65%) Consultant
8 227 (4.09%) Data Engineer
9 193 (3.48%) IT Support
10 188 (3.39%) Support Engineer
11 174 (3.14%) Project Manager
12 137 (2.47%) Java Developer
13 130 (2.34%) Administrator
14 126 (2.27%) IT Engineer
15 122 (2.20%) Data Analyst
16 109 (1.96%) Solutions Architect
17 105 (1.89%) Software Engineer
18 99 (1.78%) Network Engineer
19 91 (1.64%) DevOps Engineer
20 89 (1.60%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 343 (6.18%) REST
2 163 (2.94%) RESTful
3 160 (2.88%) .NET
4 159 (2.87%) Kafka
5 155 (2.79%) Spring
6 146 (2.63%) React
7 145 (2.61%) SOAP
8 128 (2.31%) JSON
9 125 (2.25%) CSS
10 117 (2.11%) HTML
11 116 (2.09%) Spring Boot
12 109 (1.96%) XML
13 107 (1.93%) Middleware
14 94 (1.69%) Node.js
15 91 (1.64%) AngularJS
16 83 (1.50%) Web Services
17 72 (1.30%) PySpark
18 71 (1.28%) OAuth
19 54 (0.97%) Playwright
20 49 (0.88%) SAML
Miscellaneous
1 284 (5.12%) Onboarding
2 275 (4.96%) Product Ownership
3 239 (4.31%) Cloud Native
4 209 (3.77%) Self-Motivation
5 205 (3.69%) Data Centre
6 159 (2.87%) Distributed Systems
7 158 (2.85%) Enterprise Software
8 156 (2.81%) Analytical Mindset
9 155 (2.79%) Management Information System
10 133 (2.40%) Data Structures
11 130 (2.34%) Data Protection Act
12 129 (2.32%) Legacy Systems
13 111 (2.00%) Virtual Team
14 89 (1.60%) Driving Licence
15 71 (1.28%) Algorithms
16 62 (1.12%) AI Agents
17 61 (1.10%) CMDB
18 55 (0.99%) Mobile App
19 52 (0.94%) Foreign Exchange (FX)
19 52 (0.94%) PKI
Operating Systems
1 698 (12.58%) Windows
2 291 (5.24%) Linux
3 147 (2.65%) Windows Server
4 116 (2.09%) Windows 10
5 108 (1.95%) Unix
6 94 (1.69%) Android
7 88 (1.59%) Apple iOS
8 85 (1.53%) Mac OS
9 46 (0.83%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 20 (0.36%) Ubuntu
11 13 (0.23%) VMS
11 13 (0.23%) Windows Server 2019
12 11 (0.20%) zOS
13 9 (0.16%) Mac OS X
14 8 (0.14%) Solaris
15 6 (0.11%) CentOS
16 4 (0.072%) AIX
16 4 (0.072%) Debian
16 4 (0.072%) Windows 7
16 4 (0.072%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 1,511 (27.23%) Agile
2 1,073 (19.34%) Continuous Improvement
3 1,011 (18.22%) Stakeholder Management
4 919 (16.56%) CI/CD
5 851 (15.34%) DevOps
6 697 (12.56%) AI
7 608 (10.96%) Decision-Making
8 582 (10.49%) Analytics
9 579 (10.43%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 575 (10.36%) Migration
11 518 (9.34%) Customer Service
12 509 (9.17%) ITIL
13 441 (7.95%) Validation
14 433 (7.80%) Business Intelligence
15 432 (7.79%) Data Modelling
16 418 (7.53%) Test Automation
17 405 (7.30%) Scrum
18 367 (6.61%) Project Management
19 366 (6.60%) Roadmaps
20 347 (6.25%) Change Management
Programming Languages
1 980 (17.66%) SQL
2 917 (16.53%) Python
3 448 (8.07%) Java
4 309 (5.57%) JavaScript
5 297 (5.35%) PowerShell
6 189 (3.41%) C#
7 144 (2.60%) Bash
8 120 (2.16%) TypeScript
9 93 (1.68%) PL/SQL
10 67 (1.21%) C++
11 52 (0.94%) T-SQL
12 47 (0.85%) Shell Script
13 41 (0.74%) Go
14 38 (0.68%) Kotlin
15 36 (0.65%) Bicep
16 35 (0.63%) C
17 33 (0.59%) Apex Code
17 33 (0.59%) R
18 32 (0.58%) Data Analysis Expressions
19 26 (0.47%) Groovy
Qualifications
1 1,224 (22.06%) Security Cleared
2 837 (15.08%) SC Cleared
3 654 (11.79%) Degree
4 220 (3.96%) DV Cleared
5 181 (3.26%) Computer Science Degree
6 161 (2.90%) BPSS Clearance
7 147 (2.65%) Microsoft Certification
8 136 (2.45%) Cisco Certification
9 82 (1.48%) CISSP
9 82 (1.48%) PMP
10 78 (1.41%) PMI Certification
11 77 (1.39%) CCNA
12 74 (1.33%) A+ Certification
13 72 (1.30%) Azure Certification
14 65 (1.17%) Master's Degree
15 54 (0.97%) Network+ Certification
16 53 (0.96%) CISM
17 52 (0.94%) MCSE
18 46 (0.83%) AWS Certification
19 41 (0.74%) CCNP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 386 (6.96%) Data Quality
2 334 (6.02%) QA
3 146 (2.63%) GDPR
4 143 (2.58%) Accessibility
5 118 (2.13%) SLA
6 92 (1.66%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 85 (1.53%) PMO
8 71 (1.28%) NIST
9 60 (1.08%) GRC
10 30 (0.54%) WCAG
11 28 (0.50%) Actionable Recommendations
11 28 (0.50%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 23 (0.41%) GxP
13 16 (0.29%) ISO 20022
13 16 (0.29%) PCI DSS
14 15 (0.27%) 21 CFR Part 11
14 15 (0.27%) NCSC
15 13 (0.23%) COBIT
16 12 (0.22%) HIPAA
17 11 (0.20%) GMP
System Software
1 416 (7.50%) Active Directory
2 368 (6.63%) Docker
3 132 (2.38%) VMware Infrastructure
4 51 (0.92%) vSphere
5 50 (0.90%) VMware NSX
6 48 (0.87%) VMware ESXi
7 43 (0.77%) Hyper-V
8 31 (0.56%) Virtual Machines
9 28 (0.50%) Virtual Desktop
10 22 (0.40%) vCloud
11 20 (0.36%) Firmware
12 18 (0.32%) IAG
13 11 (0.20%) Oracle RAC
14 6 (0.11%) NFS
14 6 (0.11%) Squid
15 4 (0.072%) Microsoft App-V
15 4 (0.072%) Snort
16 2 (0.036%) EMC RecoverPoint
16 2 (0.036%) SRDF
16 2 (0.036%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 430 (7.75%) Kubernetes
2 329 (5.93%) Terraform
3 174 (3.14%) Ansible
4 128 (2.31%) Microsoft Intune
5 106 (1.91%) Grafana
6 92 (1.66%) Prometheus
7 85 (1.53%) SCCM
8 57 (1.03%) vCenter Server
9 35 (0.63%) Single Sign-On
10 31 (0.56%) FortiGate
11 28 (0.50%) Control-M
12 25 (0.45%) SCOM
13 21 (0.38%) Argo
14 18 (0.32%) Jamf Pro
15 16 (0.29%) Nessus
15 16 (0.29%) WSUS
16 14 (0.25%) IBM Guardium
17 12 (0.22%) Kibana
17 12 (0.22%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
18 11 (0.20%) Puppet
Vendors
1 1,106 (19.93%) Microsoft
2 409 (7.37%) Oracle
3 354 (6.38%) SAP
4 351 (6.33%) ServiceNow
5 203 (3.66%) VMware
6 181 (3.26%) Google
7 137 (2.47%) Salesforce
8 132 (2.38%) Splunk
9 128 (2.31%) Cisco
10 119 (2.14%) Databricks
11 85 (1.53%) Workday
12 68 (1.23%) Adobe
13 67 (1.21%) Dynatrace
14 64 (1.15%) Dell
15 57 (1.03%) MuleSoft
16 54 (0.97%) Apple
16 54 (0.97%) Citrix
16 54 (0.97%) Red Hat
17 53 (0.96%) CyberArk
18 51 (0.92%) IBM