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 19 October 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
19 Oct 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 4 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +6 +5
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 610 567 540
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 14.54% 13.91% 10.58%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.32% 16.50% 12.01%
Number of daily rates quoted 355 314 302
10th Percentile £258 £275 £313
25th Percentile £358 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £475 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year - -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £553 £550 £588
90th Percentile £650 £619 £700
England median daily rate £488 £500 £525
% change year-on-year -2.50% -4.76% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 58 16 23
10th Percentile £13.82 £11.88 £16.32
25th Percentile £17.30 £17.79 £17.16
Median hourly rate £20.15 £37.64 £23.61
Median % change year-on-year -46.47% +59.40% +4.93%
75th Percentile £31.16 £63.75 £46.18
90th Percentile £63.51 £73.67 £70.40
England median hourly rate £18.90 £16.23 £51.24
% change year-on-year +16.42% -68.32% +77.17%

All Process and 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 3,737 3,437 4,498
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 89.10% 84.32% 88.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,457 1,872 3,029
10th Percentile £250 £294 £284
25th Percentile £369 £400 £405
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £470 £488 £500
Median % change year-on-year -3.59% -2.50% -
75th Percentile £563 £575 £600
90th Percentile £671 £655 £683
England median daily rate £510 £525 £550
% change year-on-year -2.86% -4.55% -
Number of hourly rates quoted 220 178 213
10th Percentile £14.47 £14.28 £15.75
25th Percentile £17.48 £18.13 £18.00
Median hourly rate £23.45 £35.00 £29.00
Median % change year-on-year -33.01% +20.69% +36.47%
75th Percentile £37.56 £51.90 £46.18
90th Percentile £65.03 £70.00 £62.80
England median hourly rate £25.15 £41.50 £45.00
% change year-on-year -39.40% -7.78% +28.77%

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 19 October 2025.

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 19 October 2025.

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 19 October 2025. 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 -1 349 £458 -0.54% 654
Yorkshire -5 230 £495 -1.00% 313
North East -8 34 £450 - 129
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 (5.08%) Confluence
2 25 (4.10%) SharePoint
3 16 (2.62%) Microsoft Exchange
4 14 (2.30%) Skype for Business
5 7 (1.15%) Exchange Server 2013
5 7 (1.15%) Mattermost
6 6 (0.98%) Apache Spark
6 6 (0.98%) JBoss
6 6 (0.98%) Tomcat
7 5 (0.82%) CICS
8 4 (0.66%) Apache Airflow
9 3 (0.49%) IIS
9 3 (0.49%) WebSphere
9 3 (0.49%) WebSphere Application Server
10 2 (0.33%) Apache
10 2 (0.33%) CMS
11 1 (0.16%) Moodle
11 1 (0.16%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.16%) NetWeaver
11 1 (0.16%) WebLogic
Applications
1 55 (9.02%) Microsoft Excel
2 30 (4.92%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 28 (4.59%) Microsoft Office
4 23 (3.77%) MS Visio
5 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.33%) Simulink
7 1 (0.16%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.16%) MadCap Flare
7 1 (0.16%) Maple
7 1 (0.16%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 31 (5.08%) SAP S/4HANA
2 6 (0.98%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.66%) ContrOCC
3 4 (0.66%) SAP EHS
3 4 (0.66%) SAP EWM
4 3 (0.49%) Kondor
4 3 (0.49%) Maximo
5 2 (0.33%) Dynamics AX
5 2 (0.33%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.16%) Finacle
6 1 (0.16%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 1 (0.16%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Assets
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Cash Management
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle ERP
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Payables
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Receivables
6 1 (0.16%) Oracle Subledger Accounting
6 1 (0.16%) SAP HCM
Cloud Services
1 92 (15.08%) AWS
2 86 (14.10%) Azure
3 46 (7.54%) GCP
4 42 (6.89%) Microsoft 365
5 41 (6.72%) Power Platform
6 31 (5.08%) GitHub
7 20 (3.28%) Serverless
8 18 (2.95%) AWS Lambda
9 16 (2.62%) Amazon S3
10 13 (2.13%) Amazon ECS
10 13 (2.13%) GitHub Actions
10 13 (2.13%) SaaS
11 12 (1.97%) Amazon CloudWatch
12 11 (1.80%) Datadog
12 11 (1.80%) Dynamics 365
13 10 (1.64%) Amazon EC2
13 10 (1.64%) Amazon SQS
13 10 (1.64%) Power Automate
14 9 (1.48%) AWS CloudFormation
14 9 (1.48%) OneDrive
Communications & Networking
1 14 (2.30%) Skype
2 13 (2.13%) Network Security
3 11 (1.80%) Firewall
4 9 (1.48%) DNS
5 8 (1.31%) LAN
5 8 (1.31%) WAN
6 7 (1.15%) Softphone
6 7 (1.15%) Unified Communications
6 7 (1.15%) WebEx
7 6 (0.98%) TCP/IP
8 3 (0.49%) DMZ
8 3 (0.49%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
8 3 (0.49%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
8 3 (0.49%) Internet
8 3 (0.49%) SAN
8 3 (0.49%) SSL
8 3 (0.49%) VoIP
9 2 (0.33%) NAS
9 2 (0.33%) VPN
9 2 (0.33%) Wireless
Database & Business Intelligence
1 34 (5.57%) Power BI
2 26 (4.26%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.44%) SQL Server
4 19 (3.11%) MongoDB
5 17 (2.79%) NoSQL
5 17 (2.79%) Oracle Database
6 15 (2.46%) DynamoDB
6 15 (2.46%) Relational Database
7 12 (1.97%) Tableau
8 11 (1.80%) Amazon RDS
8 11 (1.80%) BigQuery
8 11 (1.80%) MySQL
9 9 (1.48%) Data Warehouse
9 9 (1.48%) RDBMS
10 7 (1.15%) Amazon Aurora
11 6 (0.98%) Oracle Reports
11 6 (0.98%) Power Query
11 6 (0.98%) Redis
12 5 (0.82%) Big Data
13 4 (0.66%) Amazon Redshift
Development Applications
1 84 (13.77%) JIRA
2 64 (10.49%) Git
3 52 (8.52%) Jenkins
4 28 (4.59%) GitLab
5 14 (2.30%) JUnit
5 14 (2.30%) Maven
6 13 (2.13%) Cucumber
7 12 (1.97%) Gradle
8 10 (1.64%) Postman
8 10 (1.64%) Selenium
9 8 (1.31%) SonarQube
9 8 (1.31%) Sonatype Nexus
10 7 (1.15%) Cypress.io
10 7 (1.15%) SoapUI
11 5 (0.82%) SonarLint
12 4 (0.66%) Mockito
12 4 (0.66%) TestRail
13 3 (0.49%) JMeter
13 3 (0.49%) Oracle Forms
14 2 (0.33%) Rational DOORS
General
1 337 (55.25%) Social Skills
2 219 (35.90%) Analytical Skills
3 160 (26.23%) Finance
4 63 (10.33%) Banking
5 46 (7.54%) Public Sector
6 17 (2.79%) Influencing Skills
7 15 (2.46%) Police
7 15 (2.46%) Presentation Skills
8 14 (2.30%) Inclusion and Diversity
8 14 (2.30%) Manufacturing
9 12 (1.97%) Legal
10 11 (1.80%) Law
10 11 (1.80%) Telecoms
11 10 (1.64%) Pharmaceutical
12 9 (1.48%) Organisational Skills
13 8 (1.31%) Retail
14 7 (1.15%) Local Government
14 7 (1.15%) Marketing
15 6 (0.98%) Financial Institution
15 6 (0.98%) Military
Job Titles
1 118 (19.34%) Analyst
2 82 (13.44%) Developer
3 44 (7.21%) Architect
4 41 (6.72%) Senior
5 36 (5.90%) Business Analyst
6 34 (5.57%) Consultant
7 29 (4.75%) Support Analyst
8 28 (4.59%) Lead
9 22 (3.61%) Java Developer
10 19 (3.11%) Administrator
10 19 (3.11%) IT Support
10 19 (3.11%) Project Manager
11 17 (2.79%) Support Engineer
12 15 (2.46%) Automation Engineer
13 14 (2.30%) Incident Manager
13 14 (2.30%) Service Analyst
14 13 (2.13%) Operational Support Analyst
14 13 (2.13%) Operations Analyst
14 13 (2.13%) Operations Support Analyst
14 13 (2.13%) Technical Architect
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (6.07%) REST
2 27 (4.43%) Spring Boot
3 26 (4.26%) Kafka
4 25 (4.10%) Spring
5 23 (3.77%) FastAPI
6 21 (3.44%) React
7 20 (3.28%) RESTful
8 19 (3.11%) HTML
9 16 (2.62%) CSS
10 13 (2.13%) .NET
10 13 (2.13%) AngularJS
10 13 (2.13%) Node.js
11 12 (1.97%) SOAP
12 11 (1.80%) JSON
13 10 (1.64%) OpenTelemetry
14 8 (1.31%) J2EE
14 8 (1.31%) JMS
14 8 (1.31%) Middleware
14 8 (1.31%) Web Services
14 8 (1.31%) XML
Miscellaneous
1 29 (4.75%) Product Ownership
2 24 (3.93%) Management Information System
3 19 (3.11%) Cloud Native
4 18 (2.95%) Data Protection Act
5 15 (2.46%) Onboarding
6 12 (1.97%) Data Structures
7 11 (1.80%) Analytical Mindset
7 11 (1.80%) Self-Motivation
8 10 (1.64%) Enterprise Software
8 10 (1.64%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 10 (1.64%) Virtual Team
9 9 (1.48%) N-Tier
10 8 (1.31%) Data Centre
10 8 (1.31%) Legacy Systems
11 7 (1.15%) Algorithms
11 7 (1.15%) Public Cloud
12 6 (0.98%) CMDB
12 6 (0.98%) Mainframe
13 5 (0.82%) Greenfield Project
14 4 (0.66%) Cyberattack
Operating Systems
1 51 (8.36%) Linux
2 40 (6.56%) Windows
3 16 (2.62%) Unix
4 11 (1.80%) Android
4 11 (1.80%) Apple iOS
5 10 (1.64%) Windows 10
6 6 (0.98%) Mac OS X
7 4 (0.66%) Windows Server
8 3 (0.49%) zOS
9 2 (0.33%) VMS
10 1 (0.16%) Mac OS
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (28.52%) Agile
2 102 (16.72%) CI/CD
3 83 (13.61%) Stakeholder Management
4 82 (13.44%) Continuous Improvement
5 75 (12.30%) DevOps
6 73 (11.97%) Decision-Making
7 61 (10.00%) Test Automation
8 60 (9.84%) Migration
9 59 (9.67%) Project Management
10 58 (9.51%) Analytics
11 56 (9.18%) ITIL
12 54 (8.85%) Business Intelligence
13 50 (8.20%) Mentoring
14 49 (8.03%) AI
15 48 (7.87%) Containerisation
16 45 (7.38%) Scrum
17 42 (6.89%) Roadmaps
17 42 (6.89%) SDLC
18 41 (6.72%) Microservices
18 41 (6.72%) Requirements Gathering
Programming Languages
1 92 (15.08%) Python
2 65 (10.66%) Java
3 64 (10.49%) SQL
4 30 (4.92%) JavaScript
5 27 (4.43%) PowerShell
5 27 (4.43%) Shell Script
6 19 (3.11%) TypeScript
7 15 (2.46%) Bash
8 12 (1.97%) C#
9 7 (1.15%) Go
10 6 (0.98%) Data Analysis Expressions
11 5 (0.82%) Perl
12 4 (0.66%) COBOL
12 4 (0.66%) Groovy
12 4 (0.66%) JCL
12 4 (0.66%) T-SQL
12 4 (0.66%) VBA
13 3 (0.49%) VB.NET
14 2 (0.33%) ABAP
14 2 (0.33%) C++
Qualifications
1 67 (10.98%) Degree
2 62 (10.16%) Security Cleared
3 43 (7.05%) SC Cleared
4 25 (4.10%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (3.93%) BPSS Clearance
6 12 (1.97%) CISSP
6 12 (1.97%) Six Sigma Green Belt
7 9 (1.48%) AWS Certification
7 9 (1.48%) DBS Check
7 9 (1.48%) ITIL Certification
8 8 (1.31%) CISM
9 7 (1.15%) ISTQB
9 7 (1.15%) PMP
10 5 (0.82%) Azure Certification
11 4 (0.66%) CBAP
11 4 (0.66%) Microsoft Certification
11 4 (0.66%) PRINCE2 Practitioner
12 3 (0.49%) GCIH
12 3 (0.49%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
12 3 (0.49%) PMI Certification
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 32 (5.25%) GDPR
1 32 (5.25%) QA
2 21 (3.44%) Accessibility
3 18 (2.95%) Data Quality
4 14 (2.30%) Sarbanes-Oxley
5 13 (2.13%) SLA
6 11 (1.80%) SEPA
7 10 (1.64%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (1.64%) NIST
7 10 (1.64%) PCI DSS
8 8 (1.31%) ISO 20022
9 7 (1.15%) PMO
10 6 (0.98%) PSD2
11 5 (0.82%) Actionable Recommendations
11 5 (0.82%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.33%) COBIT
12 2 (0.33%) GRC
12 2 (0.33%) SOC 2
12 2 (0.33%) WCAG
13 1 (0.16%) HL7
System Software
1 51 (8.36%) Docker
2 29 (4.75%) Active Directory
3 11 (1.80%) Oracle RAC
4 6 (0.98%) VMware NSX
5 4 (0.66%) VMware Infrastructure
6 3 (0.49%) vSphere
7 2 (0.33%) Virtual Machines
8 1 (0.16%) BitLocker
8 1 (0.16%) Firmware
8 1 (0.16%) Job Entry Subsystem
8 1 (0.16%) RACF
8 1 (0.16%) Time Sharing Option
8 1 (0.16%) Virtual Servers
8 1 (0.16%) VMware ESXi
8 1 (0.16%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 50 (8.20%) Kubernetes
2 30 (4.92%) Ansible
3 27 (4.43%) Terraform
4 22 (3.61%) Grafana
5 19 (3.11%) Prometheus
6 15 (2.46%) SCCM
7 12 (1.97%) Microsoft Intune
8 11 (1.80%) Data Guard
9 10 (1.64%) yum
10 9 (1.48%) Control-M
10 9 (1.48%) IBM Guardium
10 9 (1.48%) Nessus
10 9 (1.48%) SCOM
11 4 (0.66%) Single Sign-On
11 4 (0.66%) vCenter Server
12 3 (0.49%) HP ALM
12 3 (0.49%) Norton AntiVirus
12 3 (0.49%) Systems Management Server (SMS)
13 2 (0.33%) EMC NetWorker
13 2 (0.33%) Oracle RMAN
Vendors
1 147 (24.10%) Microsoft
2 55 (9.02%) SAP
3 44 (7.21%) ServiceNow
4 39 (6.39%) Oracle
5 26 (4.26%) Google
6 23 (3.77%) Splunk
7 13 (2.13%) VMware
8 12 (1.97%) Cisco
9 11 (1.80%) IBM
10 9 (1.48%) Red Hat
10 9 (1.48%) Tenable
11 7 (1.15%) BeyondTrust
11 7 (1.15%) CyberArk
11 7 (1.15%) Databricks
11 7 (1.15%) F5
11 7 (1.15%) Thycotic
12 6 (0.98%) Computacenter
13 5 (0.82%) Gigya
14 4 (0.66%) Liquidlogic
14 4 (0.66%) Salesforce