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

6 months to
20 Aug 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 4 5
Rank change year-on-year -10 +1 +9
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 719 701 545
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 9.62% 17.52% 13.13%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 11.57% 19.65% 15.69%
Number of daily rates quoted 404 394 318
10th Percentile £263 £269 £281
25th Percentile £356 £371 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £445 £475 £488
Median % change year-on-year -6.26% -2.56% -2.50%
75th Percentile £538 £575 £551
90th Percentile £600 £650 £638
England median daily rate £500 £493 £500
% change year-on-year +1.52% -1.50% -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 71 67 36
10th Percentile £14.13 £13.35 -
25th Percentile £17.00 £17.44 -
Median hourly rate £24.00 £21.24 £10.95
Median % change year-on-year +12.99% +93.97% -61.91%
75th Percentile £50.79 £31.06 £31.79
90th Percentile £86.00 £63.40 £63.13
England median hourly rate £20.52 £19.96 £16.23
% change year-on-year +2.83% +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 6,213 3,567 3,473
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 83.11% 89.13% 83.67%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,666 2,286 2,082
10th Percentile £313 £268 £313
25th Percentile £402 £375 £408
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £500 £470 £500
Median % change year-on-year +6.38% -6.00% -
75th Percentile £588 £556 £588
90th Percentile £675 £650 £675
England median daily rate £525 £510 £530
% change year-on-year +2.94% -3.77% -3.64%
Number of hourly rates quoted 507 208 237
10th Percentile £16.01 £12.82 £11.07
25th Percentile £21.33 £17.48 £14.13
Median hourly rate £43.96 £22.63 £27.00
Median % change year-on-year +94.26% -16.19% -1.82%
75th Percentile £70.00 £44.26 £48.75
90th Percentile £78.00 £72.50 £69.85
England median hourly rate £43.96 £25.15 £43.00
% change year-on-year +74.79% -41.51% +4.83%

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 20 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 20 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 20 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 -12 348 £450 -5.76% 434
Yorkshire -8 310 £450 -5.26% 319
North East -13 66 £375 -16.67% 140
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 (3.34%) Confluence
2 23 (3.20%) SharePoint
3 19 (2.64%) Apache Spark
4 10 (1.39%) Apache Airflow
5 8 (1.11%) Apache
5 8 (1.11%) Microsoft Exchange
6 6 (0.83%) CMS
6 6 (0.83%) Jupyter
7 4 (0.56%) CICS
8 3 (0.42%) WordPress
9 2 (0.28%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 2 (0.28%) Camunda
9 2 (0.28%) Oracle Workflow
9 2 (0.28%) WebLogic
10 1 (0.14%) Apache Superset
10 1 (0.14%) JBoss
10 1 (0.14%) Mule ESB
10 1 (0.14%) NetWeaver
10 1 (0.14%) Tomcat
10 1 (0.14%) WebSphere
Applications
1 38 (5.29%) Microsoft Excel
2 35 (4.87%) Microsoft Office
3 10 (1.39%) Microsoft PowerPoint
3 10 (1.39%) MS Visio
4 7 (0.97%) Microsoft Project
5 6 (0.83%) Chatbot
6 5 (0.70%) Spreadsheet
7 3 (0.42%) Acrobat
7 3 (0.42%) 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 (3.20%) SAP S/4HANA
2 11 (1.53%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.56%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.56%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.42%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.28%) SAP HCM
5 2 (0.28%) SAP Payroll
5 2 (0.28%) Teamcenter
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
6 1 (0.14%) Workday HCM
Cloud Services
1 123 (17.11%) Azure
2 96 (13.35%) AWS
3 92 (12.80%) Microsoft 365
4 58 (8.07%) Power Platform
5 44 (6.12%) GCP
6 30 (4.17%) Entra ID
7 26 (3.62%) GitHub
8 22 (3.06%) OpenShift
9 18 (2.50%) Azure DevOps
10 15 (2.09%) Serverless
11 13 (1.81%) Microsoft Copilot
11 13 (1.81%) Power Automate
12 10 (1.39%) Google Kubernetes Engine
12 10 (1.39%) SaaS
13 9 (1.25%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (1.25%) PowerApps
14 8 (1.11%) Copilot Studio
15 7 (0.97%) AWS Lambda
15 7 (0.97%) Google Workspace
16 6 (0.83%) Kong
Communications & Networking
1 41 (5.70%) VPN
2 32 (4.45%) Firewall
3 29 (4.03%) DNS
4 25 (3.48%) LAN
5 24 (3.34%) WAN
6 19 (2.64%) Wireless
7 18 (2.50%) Network Security
7 18 (2.50%) VLAN
8 17 (2.36%) TCP/IP
9 16 (2.23%) Wi-Fi
10 15 (2.09%) DHCP
11 13 (1.81%) VoIP
12 11 (1.53%) Cisco Nexus
13 10 (1.39%) BGP
13 10 (1.39%) OSPF
14 9 (1.25%) WLAN
15 7 (0.97%) Cisco ASA
15 7 (0.97%) IPsec
15 7 (0.97%) SAN
16 6 (0.83%) Cisco Firepower
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (5.98%) Power BI
2 30 (4.17%) SQL Server
3 24 (3.34%) MongoDB
4 23 (3.20%) Data Warehouse
5 16 (2.23%) NoSQL
6 15 (2.09%) PostgreSQL
7 14 (1.95%) Tableau
8 13 (1.81%) Relational Database
9 11 (1.53%) Big Data
10 9 (1.25%) Db2
11 8 (1.11%) Hadoop
11 8 (1.11%) Metadata
12 7 (0.97%) MySQL
13 6 (0.83%) DataStage
13 6 (0.83%) Oracle Database
14 5 (0.70%) Neo4j
15 4 (0.56%) Data Lake
15 4 (0.56%) Snowflake Schema
16 3 (0.42%) Amazon Athena
16 3 (0.42%) Azure SQL Data Warehouse
Development Applications
1 65 (9.04%) JIRA
2 37 (5.15%) Git
3 34 (4.73%) Jenkins
4 23 (3.20%) GitLab
5 9 (1.25%) 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 (0.70%) Maven
9 4 (0.56%) Cypress.io
9 4 (0.56%) Gradle
9 4 (0.56%) Mockito
9 4 (0.56%) MSI
10 3 (0.42%) Claude Code
10 3 (0.42%) JUnit
10 3 (0.42%) LoadRunner
10 3 (0.42%) Serenity BDD
10 3 (0.42%) SonarQube
10 3 (0.42%) Subversion
General
1 347 (48.26%) Social Skills
2 296 (41.17%) Analytical Skills
3 185 (25.73%) Finance
4 82 (11.40%) Banking
5 66 (9.18%) Public Sector
6 34 (4.73%) Manufacturing
7 33 (4.59%) Organisational Skills
8 27 (3.76%) Documentation Skills
8 27 (3.76%) Legal
9 20 (2.78%) Influencing Skills
10 17 (2.36%) Inclusion and Diversity
11 16 (2.23%) Law
11 16 (2.23%) Retail
12 9 (1.25%) Aerospace
12 9 (1.25%) Automotive
12 9 (1.25%) Financial Institution
12 9 (1.25%) Telecoms
13 8 (1.11%) Presentation Skills
14 7 (0.97%) Marketing
15 6 (0.83%) Police
Job Titles
1 126 (17.52%) Analyst
2 85 (11.82%) Developer
3 61 (8.48%) Lead
4 55 (7.65%) Senior
5 42 (5.84%) IT Support
6 38 (5.29%) Architect
7 29 (4.03%) Support Engineer
8 26 (3.62%) Java Developer
9 24 (3.34%) Business Analyst
9 24 (3.34%) Consultant
9 24 (3.34%) IT Engineer
9 24 (3.34%) Network Engineer
10 22 (3.06%) Data Engineer
11 21 (2.92%) Administrator
11 21 (2.92%) Data Analyst
12 19 (2.64%) IT Support Engineer
12 19 (2.64%) Service Analyst
13 18 (2.50%) DevOps Engineer
14 17 (2.36%) Python Developer
14 17 (2.36%) Support Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 52 (7.23%) Terraform
2 38 (5.29%) REST
3 31 (4.31%) Spring
4 29 (4.03%) Kafka
5 26 (3.62%) Spring Boot
6 20 (2.78%) React
7 17 (2.36%) HTML
8 15 (2.09%) CSS
8 15 (2.09%) Node.js
8 15 (2.09%) OpenTelemetry
9 14 (1.95%) Playwright
10 13 (1.81%) .NET
10 13 (1.81%) OAuth
11 12 (1.67%) FastAPI
11 12 (1.67%) RESTful
12 10 (1.39%) XML
13 8 (1.11%) AngularJS
13 8 (1.11%) Middleware
14 7 (0.97%) OAuth2
14 7 (0.97%) SOAP
Miscellaneous
1 50 (6.95%) Product Ownership
2 44 (6.12%) Cloud Native
3 32 (4.45%) Data Protection Act
3 32 (4.45%) Onboarding
4 28 (3.89%) Self-Motivation
5 25 (3.48%) Data Centre
6 24 (3.34%) Enterprise Software
7 22 (3.06%) Analytical Mindset
8 21 (2.92%) Driving Licence
9 18 (2.50%) Data Structures
10 16 (2.23%) Management Information System
11 15 (2.09%) Distributed Systems
11 15 (2.09%) Legacy Systems
11 15 (2.09%) Mainframe
11 15 (2.09%) PKI
12 14 (1.95%) AI Agents
13 13 (1.81%) Virtual Team
14 11 (1.53%) Mobile App
14 11 (1.53%) NHS
15 8 (1.11%) CMDB
Operating Systems
1 109 (15.16%) Windows
2 33 (4.59%) Windows 10
3 31 (4.31%) Linux
4 22 (3.06%) Apple iOS
5 20 (2.78%) Windows Server
6 19 (2.64%) Android
7 15 (2.09%) Unix
8 12 (1.67%) Mac OS
9 4 (0.56%) Mac OS X
9 4 (0.56%) Solaris
9 4 (0.56%) zOS
10 3 (0.42%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
11 2 (0.28%) AIX
11 2 (0.28%) Data ONTAP
11 2 (0.28%) HPUX
11 2 (0.28%) Oracle Linux
11 2 (0.28%) SUSE
12 1 (0.14%) Ubuntu
12 1 (0.14%) VMS
12 1 (0.14%) Windows 7
Processes & Methodologies
1 174 (24.20%) Continuous Improvement
2 171 (23.78%) Agile
3 146 (20.31%) CI/CD
4 118 (16.41%) DevOps
5 111 (15.44%) Stakeholder Management
6 78 (10.85%) AI
7 77 (10.71%) Migration
8 75 (10.43%) ITIL
9 70 (9.74%) Customer Service
10 69 (9.60%) Analytics
10 69 (9.60%) Test Automation
11 65 (9.04%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 63 (8.76%) Data Protection
13 61 (8.48%) Change Management
14 57 (7.93%) Microservices
15 56 (7.79%) Business Intelligence
15 56 (7.79%) Project Management
15 56 (7.79%) Validation
16 55 (7.65%) Containerisation
17 53 (7.37%) Cybersecurity
Programming Languages
1 115 (15.99%) Python
2 107 (14.88%) SQL
3 60 (8.34%) Java
4 49 (6.82%) PowerShell
5 24 (3.34%) JavaScript
6 21 (2.92%) Bash
7 10 (1.39%) C#
8 9 (1.25%) PL/SQL
8 9 (1.25%) R
9 8 (1.11%) T-SQL
9 8 (1.11%) TypeScript
10 7 (0.97%) Kotlin
10 7 (0.97%) Shell Script
11 6 (0.83%) Bicep
11 6 (0.83%) COBOL
12 5 (0.70%) ABAP
13 4 (0.56%) Apex Code
13 4 (0.56%) JCL
14 3 (0.42%) Go
14 3 (0.42%) Scala
Qualifications
1 93 (12.93%) Security Cleared
2 75 (10.43%) Degree
3 68 (9.46%) SC Cleared
4 33 (4.59%) Computer Science Degree
5 24 (3.34%) BPSS Clearance
6 23 (3.20%) Cisco Certification
7 22 (3.06%) Microsoft Certification
8 18 (2.50%) CISSP
9 15 (2.09%) CCNP
10 13 (1.81%) PMP
11 12 (1.67%) PMI Certification
12 11 (1.53%) A+ Certification
13 10 (1.39%) Network+ Certification
14 9 (1.25%) AWS Certification
14 9 (1.25%) Azure Certification
14 9 (1.25%) CCNA
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 50 (6.95%) Data Quality
2 26 (3.62%) Accessibility
2 26 (3.62%) QA
3 20 (2.78%) SLA
4 14 (1.95%) GDPR
4 14 (1.95%) GRC
5 12 (1.67%) NIST
6 11 (1.53%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 7 (0.97%) PMO
8 6 (0.83%) WCAG
9 4 (0.56%) PCI DSS
10 3 (0.42%) Actionable Recommendations
10 3 (0.42%) 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 (9.18%) Active Directory
2 59 (8.21%) Docker
3 23 (3.20%) VMware Infrastructure
4 10 (1.39%) vSphere
5 9 (1.25%) VMware NSX
6 8 (1.11%) Hyper-V
7 7 (0.97%) Firmware
7 7 (0.97%) Virtual Desktop
7 7 (0.97%) Virtual Machines
8 4 (0.56%) Oracle RAC
9 3 (0.42%) 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 (9.18%) Kubernetes
2 31 (4.31%) Ansible
2 31 (4.31%) Grafana
3 25 (3.48%) Prometheus
4 20 (2.78%) Microsoft Intune
5 17 (2.36%) SCCM
6 10 (1.39%) Control-M
7 9 (1.25%) Argo
7 9 (1.25%) vCenter Server
8 8 (1.11%) IBM Guardium
8 8 (1.11%) Nessus
9 4 (0.56%) Data Guard
9 4 (0.56%) Kustomize
9 4 (0.56%) Single Sign-On
10 3 (0.42%) CA Endevor
10 3 (0.42%) FortiGate
10 3 (0.42%) Istio
10 3 (0.42%) McAfee ePO
10 3 (0.42%) Oracle RMAN
10 3 (0.42%) WMI
Vendors
1 164 (22.81%) Microsoft
2 66 (9.18%) ServiceNow
3 55 (7.65%) SAP
4 37 (5.15%) Oracle
5 32 (4.45%) Splunk
6 30 (4.17%) Cisco
7 23 (3.20%) Google
7 23 (3.20%) VMware
8 15 (2.09%) Workday
9 14 (1.95%) Palo Alto
10 12 (1.67%) Concur
11 11 (1.53%) CheckPoint
11 11 (1.53%) IBM
11 11 (1.53%) Red Hat
11 11 (1.53%) Remedy
12 10 (1.39%) Salesforce
13 9 (1.25%) F5
14 8 (1.11%) Apple
14 8 (1.11%) Pure Storage
14 8 (1.11%) Tenable