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

6 months to
1 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 12 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -8 +2 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 750 699 537
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 10.21% 17.79% 12.79%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.19% 20.01% 15.24%
Number of daily rates quoted 426 391 314
10th Percentile £275 £263 £300
25th Percentile £363 £365 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £567
90th Percentile £600 £653 £638
England median daily rate £493 £495 £500
% change year-on-year -0.40% -1.00% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 72 73 41
10th Percentile £14.20 £12.96 -
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.48 £10.95
Median hourly rate £31.11 £22.14 £11.20
Median % change year-on-year +40.53% +97.77% -61.06%
75th Percentile £74.26 £30.63 £28.75
90th Percentile £86.00 £63.40 £63.75
England median hourly rate £21.00 £21.10 £16.23
% change year-on-year -0.47% +30.01% -69.09%

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 6,151 3,494 3,524
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 83.73% 88.91% 83.92%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,646 2,221 2,140
10th Percentile £313 £268 £300
25th Percentile £402 £375 £401
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £492 £469 £500
Median % change year-on-year +4.90% -6.20% -0.99%
75th Percentile £588 £553 £585
90th Percentile £675 £650 £675
England median daily rate £525 £513 £525
% change year-on-year +2.44% -2.38% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 485 205 256
10th Percentile £16.62 £12.82 £11.26
25th Percentile £22.63 £17.48 £13.97
Median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £24.60
Median % change year-on-year +94.26% -7.99% -15.19%
75th Percentile £70.00 £44.09 £48.00
90th Percentile £80.00 £73.25 £69.88
England median hourly rate £45.00 £25.15 £42.03
% change year-on-year +78.93% -40.16% -1.11%

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 1 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 1 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 1 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 -11 355 £450 -7.98% 455
Yorkshire -7 339 £450 -5.26% 286
North East -16 61 £373 -17.22% 123
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 31 (4.13%) Confluence
2 22 (2.93%) Apache Spark
3 20 (2.67%) SharePoint
4 11 (1.47%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (1.20%) Apache
6 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.80%) CMS
7 6 (0.80%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.53%) CICS
9 3 (0.40%) WordPress
10 2 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.27%) Camunda
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.13%) JBoss
11 1 (0.13%) Mule
11 1 (0.13%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
Applications
1 36 (4.80%) Microsoft Excel
2 29 (3.87%) Microsoft Office
3 12 (1.60%) MS Visio
4 9 (1.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
5 7 (0.93%) Microsoft Project
6 6 (0.80%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.53%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.40%) Acrobat
8 3 (0.40%) CATIA
9 1 (0.13%) AutoCAD
9 1 (0.13%) EngageOne
9 1 (0.13%) Navisworks
9 1 (0.13%) Revit
Business Applications
1 31 (4.13%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.47%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.53%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.40%) SAP HCM
4 3 (0.40%) SAP Payroll
5 2 (0.27%) SAP ERP
6 1 (0.13%) Actimize
6 1 (0.13%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.13%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.13%) ResourceLink
6 1 (0.13%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.13%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 121 (16.13%) Azure
2 97 (12.93%) AWS
3 72 (9.60%) Microsoft 365
4 57 (7.60%) Power Platform
5 45 (6.00%) GCP
6 35 (4.67%) OpenShift
7 33 (4.40%) GitHub
8 22 (2.93%) Entra ID
9 16 (2.13%) Azure DevOps
10 15 (2.00%) Serverless
11 12 (1.60%) Microsoft Copilot
11 12 (1.60%) Power Automate
12 11 (1.47%) SaaS
13 10 (1.33%) GitHub Actions
13 10 (1.33%) Google Kubernetes Engine
14 9 (1.20%) PowerApps
15 8 (1.07%) Copilot Studio
16 7 (0.93%) Google Workspace
17 6 (0.80%) AWS Lambda
17 6 (0.80%) Azure Monitor
Communications & Networking
1 37 (4.93%) VPN
2 30 (4.00%) DNS
3 29 (3.87%) Firewall
4 21 (2.80%) LAN
4 21 (2.80%) WAN
5 17 (2.27%) VLAN
6 16 (2.13%) Wireless
7 15 (2.00%) Network Security
7 15 (2.00%) TCP/IP
8 14 (1.87%) Wi-Fi
9 13 (1.73%) DHCP
10 11 (1.47%) VoIP
11 9 (1.20%) BGP
11 9 (1.20%) Cisco Nexus
11 9 (1.20%) SAN
12 8 (1.07%) OSPF
12 8 (1.07%) WLAN
13 6 (0.80%) SD-WAN
14 5 (0.67%) Cisco Firepower
14 5 (0.67%) IPsec
Database & Business Intelligence
1 44 (5.87%) Power BI
2 35 (4.67%) SQL Server
3 32 (4.27%) MongoDB
4 24 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
5 20 (2.67%) PostgreSQL
6 15 (2.00%) NoSQL
6 15 (2.00%) Tableau
7 13 (1.73%) Big Data
7 13 (1.73%) Relational Database
8 11 (1.47%) Hadoop
9 10 (1.33%) Metadata
10 9 (1.20%) Db2
11 8 (1.07%) MySQL
12 6 (0.80%) DataStage
12 6 (0.80%) Oracle Database
12 6 (0.80%) SQL Server Integration Services
13 5 (0.67%) Data Lake
13 5 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
14 4 (0.53%) Data Vault
14 4 (0.53%) Neo4j
Development Applications
1 83 (11.07%) JIRA
2 39 (5.20%) Jenkins
3 33 (4.40%) Git
4 21 (2.80%) GitLab
5 9 (1.20%) Mockito
5 9 (1.20%) Selenium
6 8 (1.07%) REST Assured
6 8 (1.07%) Sonatype Nexus
7 6 (0.80%) Cucumber
8 5 (0.67%) Gatling
9 4 (0.53%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.53%) Postman
10 3 (0.40%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.40%) Gradle
10 3 (0.40%) JUnit
10 3 (0.40%) Maven
10 3 (0.40%) MSI
10 3 (0.40%) Serenity BDD
10 3 (0.40%) Subversion
11 2 (0.27%) Ant
General
1 350 (46.67%) Social Skills
2 318 (42.40%) Analytical Skills
3 205 (27.33%) Finance
4 81 (10.80%) Banking
5 73 (9.73%) Public Sector
6 32 (4.27%) Organisational Skills
7 30 (4.00%) Documentation Skills
8 28 (3.73%) Legal
9 25 (3.33%) Influencing Skills
10 22 (2.93%) Manufacturing
11 19 (2.53%) Retail
12 16 (2.13%) Law
13 14 (1.87%) Inclusion and Diversity
14 9 (1.20%) Financial Institution
15 8 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 8 (1.07%) Telecoms
16 7 (0.93%) Aerospace
16 7 (0.93%) Marketing
17 6 (0.80%) Automotive
18 5 (0.67%) Games
Job Titles
1 137 (18.27%) Analyst
2 92 (12.27%) Developer
3 70 (9.33%) Lead
4 58 (7.73%) Senior
5 44 (5.87%) Architect
6 32 (4.27%) IT Support
7 31 (4.13%) Business Analyst
8 30 (4.00%) Consultant
9 29 (3.87%) Java Developer
10 26 (3.47%) Administrator
10 26 (3.47%) Data Engineer
11 23 (3.07%) Python Developer
12 22 (2.93%) Data Analyst
13 21 (2.80%) DevOps Engineer
13 21 (2.80%) Network Engineer
13 21 (2.80%) Project Manager
14 19 (2.53%) IT Engineer
14 19 (2.53%) Support Engineer
15 18 (2.40%) Service Analyst
16 15 (2.00%) IT Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 39 (5.20%) Kafka
2 35 (4.67%) REST
3 28 (3.73%) OpenTelemetry
3 28 (3.73%) Spring
4 23 (3.07%) Spring Boot
5 21 (2.80%) React
6 18 (2.40%) FastAPI
6 18 (2.40%) HTML
7 17 (2.27%) CSS
8 15 (2.00%) Node.js
9 14 (1.87%) Playwright
9 14 (1.87%) RESTful
10 13 (1.73%) .NET
11 12 (1.60%) JSON
11 12 (1.60%) OAuth
12 9 (1.20%) ActiveMQ
12 9 (1.20%) AngularJS
12 9 (1.20%) JAX-RS
12 9 (1.20%) XML
13 8 (1.07%) Middleware
Miscellaneous
1 53 (7.07%) Product Ownership
2 48 (6.40%) Cloud Native
3 32 (4.27%) Data Protection Act
4 30 (4.00%) Onboarding
5 25 (3.33%) Data Centre
6 24 (3.20%) Self-Motivation
7 23 (3.07%) Enterprise Software
8 22 (2.93%) Analytical Mindset
9 20 (2.67%) Driving Licence
9 20 (2.67%) Legacy Systems
10 16 (2.13%) Hybrid Cloud
10 16 (2.13%) Management Information System
11 15 (2.00%) Data Structures
11 15 (2.00%) Distributed Systems
11 15 (2.00%) Mainframe
12 14 (1.87%) AI Agents
13 13 (1.73%) PKI
14 12 (1.60%) Virtual Team
15 10 (1.33%) Mobile App
15 10 (1.33%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 86 (11.47%) Windows
2 38 (5.07%) Linux
3 27 (3.60%) Windows 10
4 20 (2.67%) Unix
5 17 (2.27%) Apple iOS
6 15 (2.00%) Windows Server
7 13 (1.73%) Android
7 13 (1.73%) Mac OS
8 7 (0.93%) Mac OS X
9 4 (0.53%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
9 4 (0.53%) Solaris
9 4 (0.53%) zOS
10 2 (0.27%) AIX
10 2 (0.27%) Data ONTAP
10 2 (0.27%) HPUX
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
10 2 (0.27%) SUSE
11 1 (0.13%) Ubuntu
11 1 (0.13%) VMS
11 1 (0.13%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 188 (25.07%) Agile
2 169 (22.53%) Continuous Improvement
3 157 (20.93%) CI/CD
4 129 (17.20%) DevOps
5 110 (14.67%) Stakeholder Management
6 90 (12.00%) Migration
7 78 (10.40%) Analytics
8 76 (10.13%) AI
9 73 (9.73%) Stakeholder Engagement
10 72 (9.60%) Project Management
11 71 (9.47%) Test Automation
12 66 (8.80%) Change Management
12 66 (8.80%) Containerisation
12 66 (8.80%) ITIL
13 65 (8.67%) Customer Service
14 62 (8.27%) Microservices
15 61 (8.13%) Decision-Making
15 61 (8.13%) Validation
16 60 (8.00%) Data Protection
17 57 (7.60%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 132 (17.60%) Python
2 106 (14.13%) SQL
3 59 (7.87%) Java
4 48 (6.40%) PowerShell
5 30 (4.00%) Bash
6 27 (3.60%) JavaScript
7 11 (1.47%) TypeScript
8 9 (1.20%) C#
8 9 (1.20%) PL/SQL
8 9 (1.20%) R
9 8 (1.07%) T-SQL
10 7 (0.93%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.80%) ABAP
11 6 (0.80%) Bicep
11 6 (0.80%) COBOL
11 6 (0.80%) Kotlin
12 4 (0.53%) JCL
13 3 (0.40%) Go
13 3 (0.40%) PHP
13 3 (0.40%) VBA
Qualifications
1 99 (13.20%) Security Cleared
2 73 (9.73%) SC Cleared
3 72 (9.60%) Degree
4 31 (4.13%) BPSS Clearance
5 28 (3.73%) Computer Science Degree
6 22 (2.93%) Cisco Certification
6 22 (2.93%) Microsoft Certification
7 18 (2.40%) CISSP
8 15 (2.00%) PMP
9 13 (1.73%) CCNP
9 13 (1.73%) PMI Certification
10 12 (1.60%) CCNA
11 11 (1.47%) A+ Certification
12 10 (1.33%) Network+ Certification
13 9 (1.20%) CompTIA Security+
14 8 (1.07%) AWS Certification
14 8 (1.07%) Azure Certification
15 7 (0.93%) HNC
15 7 (0.93%) OCP
15 7 (0.93%) Oracle Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 52 (6.93%) Data Quality
2 29 (3.87%) QA
3 25 (3.33%) Accessibility
4 15 (2.00%) SLA
5 14 (1.87%) GDPR
6 12 (1.60%) GRC
7 10 (1.33%) NIST
8 9 (1.20%) ISO/IEC 27001
9 8 (1.07%) PMO
10 6 (0.80%) WCAG
11 3 (0.40%) Actionable Recommendations
11 3 (0.40%) PCI DSS
11 3 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
12 2 (0.27%) HIPAA
12 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27005
12 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
13 1 (0.13%) COSHH
13 1 (0.13%) GxP
13 1 (0.13%) ISO 20022
13 1 (0.13%) SEPA
System Software
1 63 (8.40%) Docker
2 53 (7.07%) Active Directory
3 20 (2.67%) VMware Infrastructure
4 15 (2.00%) vSphere
5 13 (1.73%) VMware NSX
6 7 (0.93%) Firmware
6 7 (0.93%) Virtual Machines
7 4 (0.53%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.53%) Oracle RAC
8 3 (0.40%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.40%) VMware ESXi
9 2 (0.27%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 2 (0.27%) KVM
9 2 (0.27%) NFS
9 2 (0.27%) SRDF
10 1 (0.13%) ACF2
10 1 (0.13%) RACF
10 1 (0.13%) Terminal Services
10 1 (0.13%) Time Sharing Option
Systems Management
1 81 (10.80%) Kubernetes
2 61 (8.13%) Terraform
3 41 (5.47%) Grafana
4 39 (5.20%) Ansible
5 33 (4.40%) Prometheus
6 15 (2.00%) vCenter Server
7 14 (1.87%) Argo
7 14 (1.87%) Control-M
8 13 (1.73%) Microsoft Intune
9 12 (1.60%) IBM Guardium
9 12 (1.60%) Nessus
10 8 (1.07%) SCCM
11 4 (0.53%) Data Guard
11 4 (0.53%) Istio
11 4 (0.53%) Kustomize
11 4 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.40%) CA Endevor
12 3 (0.40%) FortiGate
12 3 (0.40%) McAfee ePO
12 3 (0.40%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 142 (18.93%) Microsoft
2 61 (8.13%) ServiceNow
3 60 (8.00%) SAP
4 39 (5.20%) Splunk
5 36 (4.80%) Oracle
6 29 (3.87%) Cisco
7 25 (3.33%) Google
8 22 (2.93%) VMware
9 19 (2.53%) Workday
10 17 (2.27%) Red Hat
11 14 (1.87%) Pure Storage
12 12 (1.60%) Concur
12 12 (1.60%) Palo Alto
12 12 (1.60%) Tenable
13 11 (1.47%) IBM
13 11 (1.47%) Remedy
14 10 (1.33%) Sage
15 9 (1.20%) Dell
16 8 (1.07%) CheckPoint
16 8 (1.07%) Databricks