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

6 months to
21 May 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 10 2 7
Rank change year-on-year -8 +5 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 738 659 575
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 11.50% 19.89% 12.47%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 13.66% 22.17% 14.59%
Number of daily rates quoted 444 392 328
10th Percentile £297 £213 £276
25th Percentile £363 £375 £375
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £490 £490
Median % change year-on-year -8.16% - -2.00%
75th Percentile £532 £575 £564
90th Percentile £613 £656 £640
England median daily rate £500 £500 £512
% change year-on-year - -2.41% -2.41%
Number of hourly rates quoted 51 52 73
10th Percentile £13.95 £17.08 -
25th Percentile £17.00 £21.24 £10.95
Median hourly rate £35.82 £26.28 £13.50
Median % change year-on-year +36.31% +94.65% -66.50%
75th Percentile £74.26 £39.35 £28.75
90th Percentile £178.75 £63.40 £60.56
England median hourly rate £21.35 £22.14 £17.00
% change year-on-year -3.57% +30.24% -66.00%

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 5,401 2,972 3,940
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 84.15% 89.71% 85.43%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,355 1,908 2,416
10th Percentile £313 £263 £300
25th Percentile £400 £379 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% -
75th Percentile £575 £556 £588
90th Percentile £663 £650 £675
England median daily rate £513 £525 £525
% change year-on-year -2.38% - -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 343 157 367
10th Percentile £16.01 £13.50 £11.07
25th Percentile £22.68 £18.51 £12.50
Median hourly rate £52.78 £25.43 £18.00
Median % change year-on-year +107.53% +41.28% -35.02%
75th Percentile £71.50 £55.93 £45.00
90th Percentile £80.80 £78.00 £58.50
England median hourly rate £46.80 £28.75 £36.50
% change year-on-year +62.78% -21.23% -0.11%

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 21 May 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 21 May 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 21 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
Yorkshire -7 348 £472 -0.63% 220
North West -7 348 £424 -13.74% 351
North East -9 50 £425 -16.26% 80
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 45 (6.10%) Confluence
2 19 (2.57%) SharePoint
3 14 (1.90%) Apache Spark
4 9 (1.22%) Microsoft Exchange
5 3 (0.41%) Adobe Experience Manager
5 3 (0.41%) Apache
5 3 (0.41%) Apache Airflow
6 2 (0.27%) JBoss
6 2 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
6 2 (0.27%) Tomcat
6 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
7 1 (0.14%) Camunda
7 1 (0.14%) CICS
7 1 (0.14%) CMS
7 1 (0.14%) Mule
7 1 (0.14%) Mule ESB
7 1 (0.14%) nginx
7 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 31 (4.20%) Microsoft Excel
2 24 (3.25%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (1.90%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 10 (1.36%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.81%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.68%) Chatbot
7 4 (0.54%) Acrobat
7 4 (0.54%) Spreadsheet
8 3 (0.41%) CATIA
9 1 (0.14%) Siemens NX
Business Applications
1 38 (5.15%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.81%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.54%) Payment Gateway
4 3 (0.41%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.41%) SAP SCM
5 1 (0.14%) Actimize
5 1 (0.14%) Dynamics CRM
5 1 (0.14%) Elite 3E
5 1 (0.14%) NetSuite
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Applications
5 1 (0.14%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
5 1 (0.14%) ResourceLink
5 1 (0.14%) SAP BPC
5 1 (0.14%) SAP ERP
5 1 (0.14%) SAP HCM
5 1 (0.14%) SAP Payroll
5 1 (0.14%) SystmOne
5 1 (0.14%) Teamcenter
5 1 (0.14%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 133 (18.02%) Azure
2 105 (14.23%) AWS
3 54 (7.32%) Microsoft 365
4 50 (6.78%) Power Platform
5 49 (6.64%) GCP
5 49 (6.64%) OpenShift
6 43 (5.83%) GitHub
7 23 (3.12%) Entra ID
8 19 (2.57%) Azure DevOps
9 18 (2.44%) Serverless
10 17 (2.30%) SaaS
11 10 (1.36%) GitHub Actions
12 9 (1.22%) Microsoft Copilot
13 8 (1.08%) Azure Functions
13 8 (1.08%) Dynamics 365
13 8 (1.08%) Google Workspace
13 8 (1.08%) Power Automate
14 7 (0.95%) Apigee
14 7 (0.95%) Azure Monitor
14 7 (0.95%) Google Kubernetes Engine
Communications & Networking
1 34 (4.61%) DNS
2 26 (3.52%) Firewall
3 17 (2.30%) TCP/IP
4 15 (2.03%) WAN
5 14 (1.90%) Network Security
6 12 (1.63%) LAN
7 11 (1.49%) SAN
7 11 (1.49%) Wi-Fi
8 9 (1.22%) DHCP
9 7 (0.95%) Kerberos
9 7 (0.95%) VLAN
10 6 (0.81%) VPN
11 5 (0.68%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
11 5 (0.68%) Wireless
12 4 (0.54%) DMZ
12 4 (0.54%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
12 4 (0.54%) NetScaler
13 3 (0.41%) NAS
13 3 (0.41%) VoIP
13 3 (0.41%) WebEx
Database & Business Intelligence
1 39 (5.28%) Power BI
2 28 (3.79%) MongoDB
3 25 (3.39%) PostgreSQL
4 24 (3.25%) SQL Server
5 20 (2.71%) Data Warehouse
6 16 (2.17%) NoSQL
6 16 (2.17%) Relational Database
7 12 (1.63%) Tableau
8 11 (1.49%) Hadoop
9 10 (1.36%) Metadata
10 8 (1.08%) Big Data
10 8 (1.08%) MySQL
11 7 (0.95%) SQL Server Integration Services
12 5 (0.68%) Power Query
12 5 (0.68%) Snowflake Schema
13 4 (0.54%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
13 4 (0.54%) Data Vault
13 4 (0.54%) DataStage
13 4 (0.54%) DB2
13 4 (0.54%) Oracle Reports
Development Applications
1 109 (14.77%) JIRA
2 47 (6.37%) Jenkins
3 29 (3.93%) Git
4 26 (3.52%) GitLab
5 12 (1.63%) Sonatype Nexus
6 11 (1.49%) Mockito
7 10 (1.36%) Selenium
8 9 (1.22%) Postman
9 7 (0.95%) JUnit
10 6 (0.81%) Cucumber
10 6 (0.81%) REST Assured
11 5 (0.68%) Gatling
12 3 (0.41%) CircleCI
12 3 (0.41%) Jasmine
12 3 (0.41%) JMeter
12 3 (0.41%) MSI
12 3 (0.41%) Oracle Forms
12 3 (0.41%) Serenity BDD
13 2 (0.27%) Maven
13 2 (0.27%) SoapUI
General
1 361 (48.92%) Social Skills
2 284 (38.48%) Analytical Skills
3 216 (29.27%) Finance
4 85 (11.52%) Banking
5 67 (9.08%) Public Sector
6 34 (4.61%) Documentation Skills
7 27 (3.66%) Legal
8 25 (3.39%) Influencing Skills
9 23 (3.12%) Organisational Skills
10 17 (2.30%) Law
10 17 (2.30%) Retail
11 15 (2.03%) Telecoms
12 13 (1.76%) Manufacturing
13 9 (1.22%) Presentation Skills
14 8 (1.08%) Inclusion and Diversity
15 7 (0.95%) Retail Banking
16 4 (0.54%) Financial Institution
16 4 (0.54%) Marketing
16 4 (0.54%) Military
17 3 (0.41%) Aerospace
Job Titles
1 137 (18.56%) Analyst
2 99 (13.41%) Developer
3 60 (8.13%) Lead
4 56 (7.59%) Business Analyst
5 48 (6.50%) Senior
6 37 (5.01%) Project Manager
7 32 (4.34%) Architect
7 32 (4.34%) Consultant
8 29 (3.93%) Java Developer
9 27 (3.66%) Data Engineer
10 24 (3.25%) Administrator
10 24 (3.25%) IT Support
11 22 (2.98%) DevOps Engineer
12 19 (2.57%) Python Developer
13 17 (2.30%) Data Analyst
13 17 (2.30%) IT Engineer
14 16 (2.17%) Technical Analyst
15 15 (2.03%) IT Analyst
15 15 (2.03%) SAP Consultant
16 14 (1.90%) Risk Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (5.15%) REST
2 37 (5.01%) Spring
3 36 (4.88%) Kafka
4 32 (4.34%) OpenTelemetry
5 31 (4.20%) Spring Boot
6 24 (3.25%) RESTful
7 21 (2.85%) React
8 19 (2.57%) FastAPI
8 19 (2.57%) JSON
9 16 (2.17%) HTML
9 16 (2.17%) SOAP
10 15 (2.03%) CSS
10 15 (2.03%) OAuth
10 15 (2.03%) XML
11 13 (1.76%) AngularJS
12 12 (1.63%) .NET
12 12 (1.63%) LDAP
12 12 (1.63%) YAML
13 11 (1.49%) Swagger
14 9 (1.22%) HTML5
Miscellaneous
1 67 (9.08%) Product Ownership
2 32 (4.34%) Onboarding
3 29 (3.93%) Cloud Native
4 27 (3.66%) Data Protection Act
5 22 (2.98%) Data Centre
5 22 (2.98%) Legacy Systems
6 21 (2.85%) Self-Motivation
7 20 (2.71%) Analytical Mindset
8 19 (2.57%) Hybrid Cloud
9 17 (2.30%) Management Information System
10 14 (1.90%) Mobile App
11 12 (1.63%) AI Agents
11 12 (1.63%) Mainframe
12 11 (1.49%) Driving Licence
13 10 (1.36%) Virtual Team
14 9 (1.22%) CMDB
14 9 (1.22%) Data Structures
15 8 (1.08%) Distributed Systems
15 8 (1.08%) Public Cloud
16 7 (0.95%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 68 (9.21%) Windows
2 51 (6.91%) Linux
3 20 (2.71%) Windows 10
4 17 (2.30%) Apple iOS
4 17 (2.30%) Unix
5 16 (2.17%) Mac OS
6 13 (1.76%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 12 (1.63%) Android
8 10 (1.36%) Windows Server
9 9 (1.22%) Ubuntu
10 8 (1.08%) CentOS
11 7 (0.95%) Windows Server 2019
12 6 (0.81%) Mac OS X
13 4 (0.54%) Windows Server 2012
14 3 (0.41%) VMS
15 2 (0.27%) AIX
15 2 (0.27%) HPUX
15 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
15 2 (0.27%) Solaris
15 2 (0.27%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 204 (27.64%) Agile
2 156 (21.14%) CI/CD
3 146 (19.78%) Continuous Improvement
4 141 (19.11%) DevOps
5 102 (13.82%) Migration
6 100 (13.55%) Stakeholder Management
7 92 (12.47%) Project Management
8 79 (10.70%) Change Management
9 71 (9.62%) Analytics
10 70 (9.49%) Validation
11 64 (8.67%) Test Automation
12 63 (8.54%) Containerisation
13 62 (8.40%) Decision-Making
14 61 (8.27%) Microservices
15 60 (8.13%) Customer Service
15 60 (8.13%) ITIL
16 59 (7.99%) Workshop Facilitation
17 57 (7.72%) ERP
18 56 (7.59%) AI
19 52 (7.05%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 127 (17.21%) Python
2 98 (13.28%) SQL
3 68 (9.21%) Java
4 49 (6.64%) PowerShell
5 34 (4.61%) Bash
6 25 (3.39%) JavaScript
7 20 (2.71%) TypeScript
8 11 (1.49%) Kotlin
9 10 (1.36%) C#
10 9 (1.22%) Perl
10 9 (1.22%) R
10 9 (1.22%) Ruby
11 8 (1.08%) Go
11 8 (1.08%) PL/SQL
12 7 (0.95%) Bicep
12 7 (0.95%) Shell Script
13 6 (0.81%) COBOL
13 6 (0.81%) Groovy
13 6 (0.81%) JCL
13 6 (0.81%) T-SQL
Qualifications
1 75 (10.16%) Security Cleared
2 72 (9.76%) Degree
3 43 (5.83%) SC Cleared
4 40 (5.42%) BPSS Clearance
5 31 (4.20%) Computer Science Degree
6 25 (3.39%) Microsoft Certification
7 18 (2.44%) A+ Certification
7 18 (2.44%) Cisco Certification
8 17 (2.30%) Network+ Certification
8 17 (2.30%) PMP
9 16 (2.17%) CCNA
10 14 (1.90%) CISSP
11 11 (1.49%) PMI Certification
12 10 (1.36%) RHCE
13 8 (1.08%) AWS Certification
13 8 (1.08%) MCSE
14 7 (0.95%) Azure Certification
14 7 (0.95%) CCNP
15 5 (0.68%) ITIL Certification
15 5 (0.68%) Master's Degree
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 37 (5.01%) Data Quality
2 28 (3.79%) QA
3 16 (2.17%) GDPR
4 12 (1.63%) ISO/IEC 27001
5 11 (1.49%) Accessibility
5 11 (1.49%) PMO
6 10 (1.36%) PSD2
6 10 (1.36%) SLA
7 9 (1.22%) GRC
7 9 (1.22%) NIST
8 8 (1.08%) PCI DSS
9 6 (0.81%) ISO 20022
10 5 (0.68%) Actionable Recommendations
10 5 (0.68%) SEPA
11 4 (0.54%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.41%) HIPAA
12 3 (0.41%) HL7
12 3 (0.41%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
System Software
1 61 (8.27%) Docker
2 46 (6.23%) Active Directory
3 25 (3.39%) VMware Infrastructure
4 18 (2.44%) vSphere
5 16 (2.17%) VMware NSX
6 8 (1.08%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.95%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.95%) Virtual Machines
8 3 (0.41%) ACF2
8 3 (0.41%) Firmware
8 3 (0.41%) ISA Server
8 3 (0.41%) RACF
8 3 (0.41%) Time Sharing Option
9 1 (0.14%) EMC RecoverPoint
9 1 (0.14%) NFS
9 1 (0.14%) SRDF
9 1 (0.14%) VMware ESXi
Systems Management
1 89 (12.06%) Kubernetes
2 61 (8.27%) Ansible
3 54 (7.32%) Terraform
4 43 (5.83%) Grafana
5 34 (4.61%) Prometheus
6 18 (2.44%) Microsoft Intune
7 14 (1.90%) Argo
7 14 (1.90%) Control-M
7 14 (1.90%) IBM Guardium
7 14 (1.90%) Nessus
7 14 (1.90%) vCenter Server
8 12 (1.63%) SCCM
9 10 (1.36%) Puppet
10 5 (0.68%) Active Directory Federation Services
10 5 (0.68%) CA Endevor
10 5 (0.68%) Kustomize
11 4 (0.54%) Kibana
12 3 (0.41%) Tivoli
12 3 (0.41%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 2 (0.27%) FortiGate
Vendors
1 119 (16.12%) Microsoft
2 60 (8.13%) SAP
3 50 (6.78%) Splunk
4 33 (4.47%) Oracle
4 33 (4.47%) ServiceNow
5 31 (4.20%) VMware
6 25 (3.39%) Red Hat
7 21 (2.85%) Google
8 16 (2.17%) Cisco
8 16 (2.17%) Workday
9 14 (1.90%) Pure Storage
9 14 (1.90%) Tenable
10 13 (1.76%) Sage
11 12 (1.63%) Dell
12 9 (1.22%) F5
12 9 (1.22%) Veeam
13 8 (1.08%) Adobe
13 8 (1.08%) Apple
13 8 (1.08%) IFS
13 8 (1.08%) Sonatype