Problem-Solving Contract Job Trends in the North of England

Problem Solving
England > North of England

The table below provides summary statistics and contractor rates for jobs advertised in the North of England requiring Problem-Solving skills. It covers contract job vacancies from the 6 months leading up to 23 August 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
23 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 16 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -12 +2 +8
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 723 701 546
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 9.57% 17.41% 13.04%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.51% 19.54% 15.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 405 392 315
10th Percentile £263 £270 £279
25th Percentile £355 £374 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £443 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -6.74% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £535 £575 £550
90th Percentile £598 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £495 £500
% change year-on-year +1.01% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 73 66 36
10th Percentile £14.03 £13.26 -
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.44 -
Median hourly rate £24.00 £21.24 £10.95
Median % change year-on-year +12.99% +93.97% -60.18%
75th Percentile £40.00 £31.28 £31.79
90th Percentile £85.80 £63.40 £63.13
England median hourly rate £20.44 £19.96 £16.23
% change year-on-year +2.43% +22.95% -70.49%

All Process & Methodology Skills
North of England

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 in the North of England.

Contract vacancies with a requirement for process or methodology skills 6,279 3,587 3,503
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 83.09% 89.10% 83.68%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,713 2,298 2,089
10th Percentile £313 £268 £313
25th Percentile £403 £375 £406
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £469 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.61% -6.20% -
75th Percentile £588 £561 £588
90th Percentile £675 £650 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £525
% change year-on-year +2.94% -2.86% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 515 212 231
10th Percentile £16.01 £12.88 £11.07
25th Percentile £21.33 £17.47 £13.87
Median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £27.50
Median % change year-on-year +94.26% -17.71% -
75th Percentile £70.00 £44.26 £49.38
90th Percentile £77.50 £72.40 £69.75
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £42.50
% change year-on-year +74.79% -40.82% -

Problem-Solving
Job Vacancy Trend in the North of England

Historical trend showing the proportion of contract IT job postings citing Problem-Solving relative to all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England.

Problem-Solving job vacancy trend in the North of England

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor daily rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Daily Rate Histogram in the North of England

Daily rate distribution for jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North of England over the 6 months to 23 August 2026.

Daily rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the North of England

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Trend in the North of England

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving.

Contractor hourly rate distribution trend for jobs in the North of England citing Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving
Hourly Rate Histogram in the North of England

Hourly rate distribution of jobs citing Problem-Solving in the North of England over the 6 months to 23 August 2026.

Hourly rate histogram for Problem-Solving in the North of England

Problem-Solving
Contract Job Locations in the North of England

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 North of England region over the 6 months to 23 August 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
North West -12 354 £445 -7.29% 414
Yorkshire -8 307 £450 -5.26% 304
North East -15 67 £375 -16.67% 135
Problem-Solving
England

Problem-Solving
Co-Occurring Skills & Capabilities in the North of England 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 24 (3.32%) Confluence
1 24 (3.32%) SharePoint
2 16 (2.21%) Apache Spark
3 10 (1.38%) Apache Airflow
4 8 (1.11%) Apache
4 8 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
5 6 (0.83%) CMS
5 6 (0.83%) Jupyter
6 4 (0.55%) CICS
7 3 (0.41%) WordPress
8 2 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
8 2 (0.28%) Camunda
8 2 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
8 2 (0.28%) WebLogic
9 1 (0.14%) Apache Superset
9 1 (0.14%) JBoss
9 1 (0.14%) Mule ESB
9 1 (0.14%) NetWeaver
9 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
9 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (5.26%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (4.84%) Microsoft Office
3 11 (1.52%) MS Visio
4 10 (1.38%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.69%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.69%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.41%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.41%) CATIA
8 2 (0.28%) AutoCAD
8 2 (0.28%) Navisworks
8 2 (0.28%) Revit
9 1 (0.14%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 23 (3.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.52%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.55%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.55%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.41%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.28%) SAP HCM
5 2 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
5 2 (0.28%) Teamcenter
5 2 (0.28%) Workday HCM
6 1 (0.14%) Actimize
6 1 (0.14%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.14%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.14%) ResourceLink
6 1 (0.14%) SAP GRC
6 1 (0.14%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.14%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 123 (17.01%) Azure
2 98 (13.55%) AWS
3 94 (13.00%) Microsoft 365
4 58 (8.02%) Power Platform
5 44 (6.09%) GCP
6 29 (4.01%) Entra ID
7 25 (3.46%) GitHub
8 22 (3.04%) OpenShift
9 17 (2.35%) Azure DevOps
10 14 (1.94%) Serverless
11 13 (1.80%) Microsoft Copilot
11 13 (1.80%) Power Automate
12 10 (1.38%) Google Kubernetes Engine
13 9 (1.24%) PowerApps
13 9 (1.24%) SaaS
14 8 (1.11%) Copilot Studio
14 8 (1.11%) GitHub Actions
15 7 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (0.97%) Google Workspace
16 6 (0.83%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 42 (5.81%) VPN
2 32 (4.43%) Firewall
3 29 (4.01%) DNS
4 26 (3.60%) LAN
5 25 (3.46%) WAN
6 19 (2.63%) Wireless
7 18 (2.49%) Network Security
7 18 (2.49%) VLAN
7 18 (2.49%) Wi-Fi
8 17 (2.35%) TCP/IP
9 15 (2.07%) DHCP
10 14 (1.94%) VoIP
11 11 (1.52%) Cisco Nexus
12 10 (1.38%) BGP
12 10 (1.38%) OSPF
13 9 (1.24%) WLAN
14 7 (0.97%) Cisco ASA
14 7 (0.97%) IPsec
14 7 (0.97%) SAN
15 6 (0.83%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (5.95%) Power BI
2 30 (4.15%) SQL Server
3 24 (3.32%) Data Warehouse
3 24 (3.32%) MongoDB
4 15 (2.07%) PostgreSQL
5 14 (1.94%) Relational Database
5 14 (1.94%) Tableau
6 13 (1.80%) NoSQL
7 11 (1.52%) Big Data
8 10 (1.38%) Db2
9 8 (1.11%) Metadata
10 7 (0.97%) DataStage
10 7 (0.97%) MySQL
11 6 (0.83%) Oracle Database
12 5 (0.69%) Hadoop
12 5 (0.69%) Neo4j
13 4 (0.55%) Data Lake
13 4 (0.55%) Snowflake Schema
14 3 (0.41%) Amazon Athena
14 3 (0.41%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 65 (8.99%) JIRA
2 36 (4.98%) Git
3 34 (4.70%) Jenkins
4 23 (3.18%) GitLab
5 9 (1.24%) Selenium
6 8 (1.11%) REST Assured
6 8 (1.11%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.83%) Cucumber
7 6 (0.83%) Gatling
8 5 (0.69%) Maven
9 4 (0.55%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.55%) Gradle
9 4 (0.55%) Mockito
9 4 (0.55%) MSI
10 3 (0.41%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.41%) JUnit
10 3 (0.41%) LoadRunner
10 3 (0.41%) Serenity BDD
10 3 (0.41%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.41%) Subversion
General
1 353 (48.82%) Social Skills
2 297 (41.08%) Analytical Skills
3 184 (25.45%) Finance
4 84 (11.62%) Banking
5 65 (8.99%) Public Sector
6 35 (4.84%) Manufacturing
7 34 (4.70%) Organisational Skills
8 29 (4.01%) Legal
9 28 (3.87%) Documentation Skills
10 20 (2.77%) Influencing Skills
11 17 (2.35%) Inclusion and Diversity
12 16 (2.21%) Law
13 15 (2.07%) Retail
14 9 (1.24%) Aerospace
14 9 (1.24%) Automotive
14 9 (1.24%) Financial Institution
14 9 (1.24%) Telecoms
15 8 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
16 7 (0.97%) Marketing
17 6 (0.83%) Police
Job Titles
1 125 (17.29%) Analyst
2 86 (11.89%) Developer
3 59 (8.16%) Lead
4 55 (7.61%) Senior
5 43 (5.95%) IT Support
6 38 (5.26%) Architect
7 31 (4.29%) Support Engineer
8 26 (3.60%) Java Developer
9 25 (3.46%) Business Analyst
9 25 (3.46%) Consultant
9 25 (3.46%) IT Engineer
10 24 (3.32%) Network Engineer
11 21 (2.90%) Administrator
11 21 (2.90%) Data Analyst
12 20 (2.77%) IT Support Engineer
13 19 (2.63%) Data Engineer
13 19 (2.63%) Service Analyst
14 18 (2.49%) DevOps Engineer
15 17 (2.35%) Python Developer
15 17 (2.35%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 51 (7.05%) Terraform
2 38 (5.26%) REST
3 32 (4.43%) Spring
4 30 (4.15%) Kafka
5 27 (3.73%) Spring Boot
6 20 (2.77%) React
7 17 (2.35%) HTML
8 15 (2.07%) CSS
8 15 (2.07%) Node.js
8 15 (2.07%) OpenTelemetry
9 14 (1.94%) Playwright
10 13 (1.80%) .NET
10 13 (1.80%) OAuth
10 13 (1.80%) RESTful
11 12 (1.66%) FastAPI
12 10 (1.38%) XML
13 8 (1.11%) AngularJS
13 8 (1.11%) Middleware
13 8 (1.11%) Web Services
14 7 (0.97%) OAuth2
Miscellaneous
1 50 (6.92%) Product Ownership
2 45 (6.22%) Cloud Native
3 33 (4.56%) Onboarding
4 32 (4.43%) Data Protection Act
5 28 (3.87%) Self-Motivation
6 25 (3.46%) Data Centre
6 25 (3.46%) Enterprise Software
7 22 (3.04%) Analytical Mindset
7 22 (3.04%) Driving Licence
8 18 (2.49%) Data Structures
9 17 (2.35%) Management Information System
10 16 (2.21%) Distributed Systems
11 15 (2.07%) Legacy Systems
11 15 (2.07%) Mainframe
11 15 (2.07%) PKI
12 13 (1.80%) AI Agents
12 13 (1.80%) Virtual Team
13 11 (1.52%) Mobile App
13 11 (1.52%) NHS
14 8 (1.11%) Enterprise Storage
Operating Systems
1 113 (15.63%) Windows
2 32 (4.43%) Linux
2 32 (4.43%) Windows 10
3 22 (3.04%) Apple iOS
4 21 (2.90%) Windows Server
5 19 (2.63%) Android
6 16 (2.21%) Unix
7 12 (1.66%) Mac OS
8 4 (0.55%) Mac OS X
8 4 (0.55%) Solaris
8 4 (0.55%) zOS
9 3 (0.41%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 2 (0.28%) AIX
10 2 (0.28%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.28%) HPUX
10 2 (0.28%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.28%) SUSE
11 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.14%) VMS
11 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 176 (24.34%) Continuous Improvement
2 168 (23.24%) Agile
3 144 (19.92%) CI/CD
4 115 (15.91%) DevOps
5 113 (15.63%) Stakeholder Management
6 79 (10.93%) Migration
7 77 (10.65%) AI
8 75 (10.37%) ITIL
9 72 (9.96%) Customer Service
10 68 (9.41%) Test Automation
11 66 (9.13%) Analytics
12 65 (8.99%) Stakeholder Engagement
13 63 (8.71%) Data Protection
14 61 (8.44%) Change Management
15 58 (8.02%) Validation
16 57 (7.88%) Microservices
17 56 (7.75%) Project Management
18 54 (7.47%) Containerisation
19 53 (7.33%) Business Intelligence
20 52 (7.19%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 112 (15.49%) Python
2 106 (14.66%) SQL
3 61 (8.44%) Java
4 50 (6.92%) PowerShell
5 24 (3.32%) JavaScript
6 21 (2.90%) Bash
7 10 (1.38%) C#
7 10 (1.38%) PL/SQL
8 9 (1.24%) R
9 8 (1.11%) Shell Script
9 8 (1.11%) T-SQL
9 8 (1.11%) TypeScript
10 7 (0.97%) Kotlin
11 6 (0.83%) COBOL
12 5 (0.69%) ABAP
12 5 (0.69%) Bicep
13 4 (0.55%) Apex Code
13 4 (0.55%) JCL
14 3 (0.41%) Go
14 3 (0.41%) Scala
Qualifications
1 95 (13.14%) Security Cleared
2 75 (10.37%) Degree
3 69 (9.54%) SC Cleared
4 33 (4.56%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (3.32%) BPSS Clearance
6 23 (3.18%) Cisco Certification
7 22 (3.04%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.49%) CISSP
9 15 (2.07%) CCNP
10 13 (1.80%) PMP
11 12 (1.66%) PMI Certification
12 11 (1.52%) A+ Certification
13 10 (1.38%) Network+ Certification
14 9 (1.24%) AWS Certification
14 9 (1.24%) CCNA
15 8 (1.11%) Azure Certification
15 8 (1.11%) CompTIA Security+
15 8 (1.11%) HNC
16 7 (0.97%) CEH
16 7 (0.97%) DBS Check
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 51 (7.05%) Data Quality
2 26 (3.60%) Accessibility
2 26 (3.60%) QA
3 21 (2.90%) SLA
4 14 (1.94%) GDPR
4 14 (1.94%) GRC
5 12 (1.66%) NIST
6 11 (1.52%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (0.97%) PMO
8 6 (0.83%) WCAG
9 4 (0.55%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.41%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
11 2 (0.28%) COSHH
11 2 (0.28%) HIPAA
11 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 27005
11 2 (0.28%) ISO/IEC 42001
11 2 (0.28%) MiFID
12 1 (0.14%) ISO 20022
12 1 (0.14%) SEPA
System Software
1 66 (9.13%) Active Directory
2 58 (8.02%) Docker
3 24 (3.32%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (1.38%) vSphere
5 9 (1.24%) Hyper-V
5 9 (1.24%) VMware NSX
6 7 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
7 6 (0.83%) Firmware
7 6 (0.83%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.55%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.41%) VMware ESXi
10 2 (0.28%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 2 (0.28%) KVM
10 2 (0.28%) NFS
10 2 (0.28%) SRDF
11 1 (0.14%) ACF2
11 1 (0.14%) Microsoft App-V
11 1 (0.14%) Microsoft Virtual Server
11 1 (0.14%) RACF
11 1 (0.14%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 66 (9.13%) Kubernetes
2 31 (4.29%) Ansible
2 31 (4.29%) Grafana
3 25 (3.46%) Prometheus
4 21 (2.90%) Microsoft Intune
5 18 (2.49%) SCCM
6 10 (1.38%) Control-M
7 9 (1.24%) Argo
7 9 (1.24%) vCenter Server
8 8 (1.11%) IBM Guardium
8 8 (1.11%) Nessus
9 4 (0.55%) Data Guard
9 4 (0.55%) Kustomize
9 4 (0.55%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.41%) CA Endevor
10 3 (0.41%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.41%) Istio
10 3 (0.41%) McAfee ePO
10 3 (0.41%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.41%) WMI
Vendors
1 165 (22.82%) Microsoft
2 65 (8.99%) ServiceNow
3 55 (7.61%) SAP
4 38 (5.26%) Oracle
5 30 (4.15%) Cisco
6 29 (4.01%) Splunk
7 25 (3.46%) VMware
8 23 (3.18%) Google
9 16 (2.21%) Workday
10 14 (1.94%) Palo Alto
11 12 (1.66%) Concur
11 12 (1.66%) IBM
12 11 (1.52%) CheckPoint
12 11 (1.52%) Red Hat
12 11 (1.52%) Remedy
13 10 (1.38%) Salesforce
14 9 (1.24%) F5
15 8 (1.11%) Apple
15 8 (1.11%) Pure Storage
15 8 (1.11%) Tenable