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 2 January 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
2 Jan 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 7 4 9
Rank change year-on-year -3 +5 +6
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 695 523 543
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 14.57% 15.08% 11.67%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.49% 17.28% 13.21%
Number of daily rates quoted 458 304 309
10th Percentile £213 £250 £185
25th Percentile £350 £362 £380
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £450 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -5.26% -5.00% +11.11%
75th Percentile £538 £550 £587
90th Percentile £611 £625 £688
England median daily rate £490 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -2.00% -2.44% -5.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 46 22 25
10th Percentile £15.18 £12.17 -
25th Percentile £17.30 £16.19 £16.25
Median hourly rate £19.65 £25.43 £22.11
Median % change year-on-year -22.75% +15.02% -1.73%
75th Percentile £44.94 £40.38 £46.18
90th Percentile £69.35 £90.52 £50.14
England median hourly rate £18.87 £21.46 £35.50
% change year-on-year -12.07% -39.55% +15.48%

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 4,214 3,027 4,110
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 88.34% 87.26% 88.31%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,802 1,723 2,724
10th Percentile £220 £263 £291
25th Percentile £363 £381 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.58% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £550 £575 £600
90th Percentile £638 £669 £675
England median daily rate £500 £525 £540
% change year-on-year -4.76% -2.78% -1.82%
Number of hourly rates quoted 259 142 202
10th Percentile £15.50 £15.02 £14.00
25th Percentile £19.88 £17.08 £17.72
Median hourly rate £30.00 £27.26 £30.00
Median % change year-on-year +10.07% -9.15% +33.33%
75th Percentile £55.00 £45.76 £46.18
90th Percentile £69.25 £67.33 £61.93
England median hourly rate £25.15 £35.00 £44.50
% change year-on-year -28.14% -21.35% +25.35%

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 2 January 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 2 January 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 2 January 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 -2 356 £446 -5.61% 271
Yorkshire -5 288 £480 -4.00% 191
North East -1 58 £450 -18.18% 95
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 41 (5.90%) SharePoint
2 34 (4.89%) Confluence
3 32 (4.60%) Microsoft Exchange
4 9 (1.29%) Apache
5 7 (1.01%) Exchange Server 2013
5 7 (1.01%) Skype for Business
6 6 (0.86%) Apache Spark
7 4 (0.58%) Apache Airflow
8 3 (0.43%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.29%) CMS
9 2 (0.29%) JBoss
9 2 (0.29%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.14%) CICS
10 1 (0.14%) EPiServer
10 1 (0.14%) Moodle
10 1 (0.14%) Mule
10 1 (0.14%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.14%) NetWeaver
10 1 (0.14%) SAS
10 1 (0.14%) WebLogic
Applications
1 49 (7.05%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (6.76%) Microsoft Office
3 26 (3.74%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 16 (2.30%) MS Visio
5 8 (1.15%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.72%) Acrobat
7 2 (0.29%) Chatbot
8 1 (0.14%) Siemens NX
8 1 (0.14%) Spreadsheet
Business Applications
1 36 (5.18%) SAP S/4HANA
2 5 (0.72%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.58%) SAP EHS
4 3 (0.43%) ContrOCC
4 3 (0.43%) iTrent
4 3 (0.43%) Kondor
4 3 (0.43%) SAP EWM
4 3 (0.43%) SAP SCM
5 2 (0.29%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.29%) Dynamics AX
5 2 (0.29%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.29%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.14%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.14%) Finacle
6 1 (0.14%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.14%) Payment Gateway
6 1 (0.14%) SAP BPC
6 1 (0.14%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.14%) SAP PSCD
6 1 (0.14%) Teamcenter
Cloud Services
1 122 (17.55%) Azure
2 107 (15.40%) AWS
3 69 (9.93%) Microsoft 365
4 51 (7.34%) GCP
5 40 (5.76%) Power Platform
6 33 (4.75%) GitHub
7 23 (3.31%) Serverless
8 20 (2.88%) SaaS
9 19 (2.73%) OpenShift
10 16 (2.30%) Azure DevOps
10 16 (2.30%) Entra ID
11 14 (2.01%) Amazon ECS
11 14 (2.01%) AWS Lambda
11 14 (2.01%) GitHub Actions
12 13 (1.87%) Google Workspace
13 12 (1.73%) Apigee
14 10 (1.44%) Amazon SQS
14 10 (1.44%) Datadog
14 10 (1.44%) Dynamics 365
14 10 (1.44%) Power Automate
Communications & Networking
1 32 (4.60%) Firewall
2 26 (3.74%) Network Security
3 18 (2.59%) DNS
4 14 (2.01%) TCP/IP
5 13 (1.87%) LAN
5 13 (1.87%) WAN
6 8 (1.15%) BGP
6 8 (1.15%) Wi-Fi
7 7 (1.01%) Skype
7 7 (1.01%) VLAN
7 7 (1.01%) WebEx
8 6 (0.86%) DHCP
8 6 (0.86%) Software-Defined Networking
9 5 (0.72%) HTTP
10 4 (0.58%) DMZ
10 4 (0.58%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
10 4 (0.58%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
10 4 (0.58%) SAN
11 3 (0.43%) Internet
11 3 (0.43%) VPN
Database & Business Intelligence
1 31 (4.46%) Power BI
2 28 (4.03%) PostgreSQL
3 21 (3.02%) SQL Server
4 20 (2.88%) Relational Database
5 19 (2.73%) MongoDB
6 18 (2.59%) NoSQL
7 16 (2.30%) Oracle Database
8 15 (2.16%) DynamoDB
9 13 (1.87%) MySQL
9 13 (1.87%) Power Query
10 12 (1.73%) BigQuery
11 10 (1.44%) Data Warehouse
12 8 (1.15%) Amazon Aurora
12 8 (1.15%) PowerPivot
13 7 (1.01%) Amazon RDS
13 7 (1.01%) Oracle Reports
14 6 (0.86%) RDBMS
14 6 (0.86%) Redis
15 5 (0.72%) DB2
16 4 (0.58%) MS Access
Development Applications
1 82 (11.80%) JIRA
2 56 (8.06%) Git
3 44 (6.33%) Jenkins
4 31 (4.46%) GitLab
5 10 (1.44%) Cucumber
6 9 (1.29%) Selenium
7 7 (1.01%) Cypress.io
7 7 (1.01%) Maven
7 7 (1.01%) Postman
7 7 (1.01%) SonarQube
7 7 (1.01%) Sonatype Nexus
8 6 (0.86%) Gradle
9 5 (0.72%) SoapUI
9 5 (0.72%) SonarLint
10 4 (0.58%) CircleCI
10 4 (0.58%) Mockito
10 4 (0.58%) Oracle Forms
10 4 (0.58%) TestRail
11 3 (0.43%) Jasmine
11 3 (0.43%) JMeter
General
1 385 (55.40%) Social Skills
2 227 (32.66%) Analytical Skills
3 191 (27.48%) Finance
4 84 (12.09%) Banking
5 79 (11.37%) Public Sector
6 27 (3.88%) Legal
7 14 (2.01%) Inclusion and Diversity
7 14 (2.01%) Influencing Skills
7 14 (2.01%) Telecoms
8 13 (1.87%) Manufacturing
9 12 (1.73%) Organisational Skills
10 10 (1.44%) Documentation Skills
11 8 (1.15%) Law
11 8 (1.15%) Presentation Skills
12 7 (1.01%) Local Government
12 7 (1.01%) Military
13 6 (0.86%) Electronics
13 6 (0.86%) Health Technology
13 6 (0.86%) Marketing
14 5 (0.72%) Pharmaceutical
Job Titles
1 113 (16.26%) Analyst
2 106 (15.25%) Developer
3 50 (7.19%) Business Analyst
4 46 (6.62%) Senior
5 40 (5.76%) Lead
6 34 (4.89%) IT Support
7 33 (4.75%) Consultant
8 31 (4.46%) Project Manager
9 30 (4.32%) Administrator
10 29 (4.17%) Architect
11 21 (3.02%) Java Developer
11 21 (3.02%) Software Engineer
12 20 (2.88%) Automation Engineer
12 20 (2.88%) Support Analyst
13 18 (2.59%) IT Engineer
13 18 (2.59%) Platform Engineer
13 18 (2.59%) Support Engineer
14 17 (2.45%) Data Engineer
15 15 (2.16%) Technical Analyst
16 14 (2.01%) IT Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 37 (5.32%) Spring Boot
2 34 (4.89%) Spring
3 31 (4.46%) REST
4 23 (3.31%) RESTful
5 21 (3.02%) Kafka
6 20 (2.88%) FastAPI
7 17 (2.45%) .NET
7 17 (2.45%) JSON
7 17 (2.45%) React
8 15 (2.16%) Node.js
9 14 (2.01%) XML
10 13 (1.87%) HTML
10 13 (1.87%) OAuth
10 13 (1.87%) SOAP
11 12 (1.73%) Elastic Stack
11 12 (1.73%) JWT
12 11 (1.58%) AngularJS
12 11 (1.58%) CSS
13 10 (1.44%) OpenTelemetry
14 9 (1.29%) JMS
Miscellaneous
1 62 (8.92%) Product Ownership
2 30 (4.32%) Onboarding
3 23 (3.31%) Cloud Native
4 17 (2.45%) Data Protection Act
4 17 (2.45%) Enterprise Software
5 16 (2.30%) Data Structures
5 16 (2.30%) Management Information System
6 14 (2.01%) Self-Motivation
7 13 (1.87%) CMDB
7 13 (1.87%) Data Centre
7 13 (1.87%) SWIFT Messaging Network
8 10 (1.44%) Algorithms
9 9 (1.29%) Greenfield Project
9 9 (1.29%) Legacy Systems
9 9 (1.29%) NHS
10 8 (1.15%) Analytical Mindset
10 8 (1.15%) Mainframe
11 7 (1.01%) Mobile App
11 7 (1.01%) Public Cloud
12 6 (0.86%) N-Tier
Operating Systems
1 82 (11.80%) Windows
2 73 (10.50%) Linux
3 21 (3.02%) Windows 10
4 20 (2.88%) Windows Server
5 18 (2.59%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
6 17 (2.45%) Unix
7 12 (1.73%) Android
8 10 (1.44%) Apple iOS
9 6 (0.86%) CentOS
9 6 (0.86%) Mac OS X
9 6 (0.86%) Ubuntu
10 5 (0.72%) Mac OS
10 5 (0.72%) VMS
11 3 (0.43%) Windows Server 2019
12 2 (0.29%) Windows Server 2012
Processes & Methodologies
1 207 (29.78%) Agile
2 139 (20.00%) CI/CD
3 119 (17.12%) Continuous Improvement
4 116 (16.69%) DevOps
5 109 (15.68%) Stakeholder Management
6 74 (10.65%) Project Management
7 70 (10.07%) Containerisation
8 69 (9.93%) Test Automation
9 64 (9.21%) Decision-Making
10 60 (8.63%) Microservices
11 59 (8.49%) Migration
12 57 (8.20%) Change Management
13 55 (7.91%) Mentoring
14 54 (7.77%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 51 (7.34%) Analytics
15 51 (7.34%) SDLC
16 50 (7.19%) Business Intelligence
17 49 (7.05%) ITIL
17 49 (7.05%) Roadmaps
17 49 (7.05%) Scrum
Programming Languages
1 114 (16.40%) Python
2 78 (11.22%) Java
3 77 (11.08%) SQL
4 38 (5.47%) PowerShell
5 36 (5.18%) Bash
6 26 (3.74%) TypeScript
7 24 (3.45%) JavaScript
8 20 (2.88%) C#
8 20 (2.88%) Shell Script
9 19 (2.73%) Perl
10 11 (1.58%) VBA
11 10 (1.44%) Go
12 9 (1.29%) Groovy
13 8 (1.15%) T-SQL
14 7 (1.01%) Ruby
15 6 (0.86%) CLIST
15 6 (0.86%) COBOL
15 6 (0.86%) JCL
15 6 (0.86%) REXX
16 5 (0.72%) Kotlin
Qualifications
1 86 (12.37%) Security Cleared
2 72 (10.36%) Degree
3 57 (8.20%) SC Cleared
4 32 (4.60%) Computer Science Degree
5 27 (3.88%) BPSS Clearance
6 14 (2.01%) Cisco Certification
6 14 (2.01%) CISSP
7 11 (1.58%) PMP
7 11 (1.58%) Six Sigma Green Belt
8 10 (1.44%) CCNA
8 10 (1.44%) CCNP
9 9 (1.29%) AWS Certification
9 9 (1.29%) CCDP
10 8 (1.15%) CISM
11 7 (1.01%) PMI Certification
12 6 (0.86%) Azure Certification
12 6 (0.86%) RHCE
13 5 (0.72%) DBS Check
13 5 (0.72%) ISTQB
14 4 (0.58%) CBAP
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 43 (6.19%) QA
2 24 (3.45%) Data Quality
2 24 (3.45%) GDPR
3 19 (2.73%) Accessibility
4 13 (1.87%) ISO/IEC 27001
4 13 (1.87%) PCI DSS
4 13 (1.87%) PSD2
5 12 (1.73%) ISO 20022
6 10 (1.44%) SEPA
7 9 (1.29%) NIST
7 9 (1.29%) SLA
8 6 (0.86%) HL7
8 6 (0.86%) PMO
9 5 (0.72%) Sarbanes-Oxley
10 4 (0.58%) WCAG
11 2 (0.29%) HIPAA
12 1 (0.14%) Actionable Recommendations
12 1 (0.14%) IEC 61508
12 1 (0.14%) ISO 26262
12 1 (0.14%) PMBOK
System Software
1 73 (10.50%) Docker
2 43 (6.19%) Active Directory
3 13 (1.87%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (1.44%) Oracle RAC
5 8 (1.15%) VMware NSX
6 6 (0.86%) ACF2
6 6 (0.86%) RACF
6 6 (0.86%) Time Sharing Option
6 6 (0.86%) vSphere
7 4 (0.58%) Hyper-V
7 4 (0.58%) Virtual Desktop
8 3 (0.43%) ISA Server
9 2 (0.29%) Virtual Machines
10 1 (0.14%) Firmware
Systems Management
1 81 (11.65%) Kubernetes
2 45 (6.47%) Terraform
3 42 (6.04%) Ansible
4 30 (4.32%) Grafana
5 24 (3.45%) SCCM
6 23 (3.31%) Prometheus
7 22 (3.17%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.44%) Control-M
8 10 (1.44%) Data Guard
8 10 (1.44%) yum
9 9 (1.29%) IBM Guardium
9 9 (1.29%) Nessus
10 8 (1.15%) Puppet
11 7 (1.01%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 6 (0.86%) CA Endevor
12 6 (0.86%) Tivoli
12 6 (0.86%) Tivoli Storage Manager
13 5 (0.72%) Kibana
13 5 (0.72%) Norton AntiVirus
14 4 (0.58%) EMC NetWorker
Vendors
1 163 (23.45%) Microsoft
2 66 (9.50%) SAP
3 48 (6.91%) Oracle
4 35 (5.04%) ServiceNow
5 29 (4.17%) VMware
6 27 (3.88%) Google
7 22 (3.17%) Splunk
8 18 (2.59%) Red Hat
9 16 (2.30%) Cisco
10 11 (1.58%) Databricks
11 10 (1.44%) Citrix
12 9 (1.29%) Adobe
12 9 (1.29%) F5
12 9 (1.29%) Tenable
13 8 (1.15%) Brio
13 8 (1.15%) IFS
13 8 (1.15%) Veeam
13 8 (1.15%) Workday
14 7 (1.01%) Computacenter
15 6 (0.86%) Meraki