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 26 November 2025, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
26 Nov 2025
Same period 2024 Same period 2023
Rank 7 4 10
Rank change year-on-year -3 +6 +7
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 667 540 541
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 14.50% 13.81% 11.39%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 16.34% 16.14% 12.89%
Number of daily rates quoted 423 291 310
10th Percentile £214 £266 £231
25th Percentile £350 £375 £386
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £455 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -4.32% -5.00% +5.26%
75th Percentile £550 £550 £587
90th Percentile £629 £600 £700
England median daily rate £478 £500 £513
% change year-on-year -4.50% -2.44% -5.09%
Number of hourly rates quoted 59 19 22
10th Percentile £13.85 £11.95 £16.25
25th Percentile £17.30 £15.58 £17.14
Median hourly rate £20.26 £24.76 £22.49
Median % change year-on-year -18.19% +10.12% -0.07%
75th Percentile £44.94 £48.38 £46.18
90th Percentile £70.98 £94.80 £54.12
England median hourly rate £19.00 £19.50 £46.12
% change year-on-year -2.56% -57.72% +57.88%

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 4,081 3,345 4,196
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 88.70% 85.53% 88.34%
Number of daily rates quoted 2,721 1,826 2,805
10th Percentile £215 £288 £275
25th Percentile £361 £390 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £463 £475 £500
Median % change year-on-year -2.63% -5.00% -
75th Percentile £551 £575 £600
90th Percentile £650 £663 £675
England median daily rate £505 £525 £545
% change year-on-year -3.81% -3.67% -0.91%
Number of hourly rates quoted 254 186 192
10th Percentile £15.18 £14.85 £15.78
25th Percentile £18.87 £17.81 £18.00
Median hourly rate £25.15 £32.50 £27.90
Median % change year-on-year -22.62% +16.49% +32.54%
75th Percentile £45.46 £46.18 £46.18
90th Percentile £70.11 £69.88 £62.00
England median hourly rate £25.15 £36.00 £45.00
% change year-on-year -30.14% -20.00% +25.00%

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 26 November 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 26 November 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 26 November 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 0 369 £450 -2.17% 431
Yorkshire -6 260 £480 -1.84% 241
North East -5 43 £450 -3.12% 87
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 34 (5.10%) SharePoint
2 32 (4.80%) Confluence
3 29 (4.35%) Microsoft Exchange
4 8 (1.20%) Apache
4 8 (1.20%) Apache Spark
5 7 (1.05%) Exchange Server 2013
5 7 (1.05%) Skype for Business
6 5 (0.75%) Apache Airflow
6 5 (0.75%) JBoss
6 5 (0.75%) Tomcat
7 3 (0.45%) WebSphere
7 3 (0.45%) WebSphere Application Server
8 2 (0.30%) CICS
8 2 (0.30%) CMS
8 2 (0.30%) IIS
9 1 (0.15%) Adobe Experience Manager
9 1 (0.15%) Mule
9 1 (0.15%) NetWeaver
9 1 (0.15%) SAS
9 1 (0.15%) WebLogic
Applications
1 58 (8.70%) Microsoft Excel
2 47 (7.05%) Microsoft Office
3 28 (4.20%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 21 (3.15%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.90%) Microsoft Project
6 2 (0.30%) Simulink
7 1 (0.15%) Acrobat
7 1 (0.15%) Chatbot
7 1 (0.15%) Maple
Business Applications
1 33 (4.95%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (1.20%) Dynamics CRM
3 4 (0.60%) ContrOCC
3 4 (0.60%) SAP EHS
3 4 (0.60%) SAP EWM
4 3 (0.45%) iTrent
4 3 (0.45%) Kondor
4 3 (0.45%) Maximo
5 2 (0.30%) Advent Geneva
5 2 (0.30%) Dynamics AX
5 2 (0.30%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.30%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.15%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.15%) Finacle
6 1 (0.15%) IBM Planning Analytics
6 1 (0.15%) NetSuite
6 1 (0.15%) SAP HCM
6 1 (0.15%) SAP HR
6 1 (0.15%) SAP PSCD
6 1 (0.15%) SystmOne
Cloud Services
1 97 (14.54%) Azure
2 93 (13.94%) AWS
3 55 (8.25%) Microsoft 365
4 48 (7.20%) Power Platform
5 47 (7.05%) GCP
6 36 (5.40%) GitHub
7 19 (2.85%) Serverless
8 16 (2.40%) SaaS
9 14 (2.10%) Amazon ECS
9 14 (2.10%) AWS Lambda
9 14 (2.10%) Azure DevOps
9 14 (2.10%) Google Workspace
10 13 (1.95%) Amazon S3
10 13 (1.95%) Entra ID
10 13 (1.95%) GitHub Actions
11 12 (1.80%) Dynamics 365
12 11 (1.65%) Datadog
12 11 (1.65%) Power Automate
13 10 (1.50%) OneDrive
13 10 (1.50%) PowerApps
Communications & Networking
1 28 (4.20%) Firewall
2 26 (3.90%) Network Security
3 10 (1.50%) DNS
3 10 (1.50%) LAN
3 10 (1.50%) WAN
4 8 (1.20%) VLAN
5 7 (1.05%) BGP
5 7 (1.05%) Skype
5 7 (1.05%) WebEx
6 6 (0.90%) Software-Defined Networking
7 5 (0.75%) TCP/IP
8 4 (0.60%) HTTP
9 3 (0.45%) DMZ
9 3 (0.45%) F5 BIG-IP GTM
9 3 (0.45%) F5 BIG-IP LTM
9 3 (0.45%) Internet
9 3 (0.45%) SAN
9 3 (0.45%) VoIP
9 3 (0.45%) Wi-Fi
10 2 (0.30%) Cisco IOS
Database & Business Intelligence
1 38 (5.70%) Power BI
2 28 (4.20%) PostgreSQL
3 24 (3.60%) SQL Server
4 20 (3.00%) MongoDB
5 19 (2.85%) NoSQL
6 18 (2.70%) Relational Database
7 16 (2.40%) Oracle Database
8 15 (2.25%) MySQL
9 14 (2.10%) DynamoDB
10 13 (1.95%) BigQuery
10 13 (1.95%) Power Query
11 10 (1.50%) Data Warehouse
12 9 (1.35%) Amazon RDS
13 8 (1.20%) Amazon Aurora
13 8 (1.20%) Tableau
14 6 (0.90%) PowerPivot
14 6 (0.90%) Redis
15 5 (0.75%) DB2
15 5 (0.75%) Oracle Reports
15 5 (0.75%) RDBMS
Development Applications
1 90 (13.49%) JIRA
2 65 (9.75%) Git
3 52 (7.80%) Jenkins
4 31 (4.65%) GitLab
5 14 (2.10%) Cucumber
6 13 (1.95%) Maven
7 12 (1.80%) JUnit
7 12 (1.80%) Selenium
8 10 (1.50%) Gradle
8 10 (1.50%) Sonatype Nexus
9 9 (1.35%) Postman
9 9 (1.35%) SonarQube
10 8 (1.20%) Cypress.io
11 7 (1.05%) SoapUI
12 5 (0.75%) SonarLint
13 4 (0.60%) Mockito
13 4 (0.60%) TestRail
14 3 (0.45%) JMeter
14 3 (0.45%) Oracle Forms
15 2 (0.30%) Rational DOORS
General
1 364 (54.57%) Social Skills
2 241 (36.13%) Analytical Skills
3 191 (28.64%) Finance
4 69 (10.34%) Public Sector
5 66 (9.90%) Banking
6 19 (2.85%) Legal
7 17 (2.55%) Influencing Skills
8 15 (2.25%) Inclusion and Diversity
9 14 (2.10%) Manufacturing
9 14 (2.10%) Police
10 10 (1.50%) Local Government
10 10 (1.50%) Presentation Skills
10 10 (1.50%) Telecoms
11 9 (1.35%) Law
11 9 (1.35%) Pharmaceutical
12 8 (1.20%) Organisational Skills
13 7 (1.05%) Marketing
13 7 (1.05%) Military
14 6 (0.90%) Electronics
15 5 (0.75%) Retail
Job Titles
1 117 (17.54%) Analyst
2 99 (14.84%) Developer
3 45 (6.75%) Senior
4 39 (5.85%) Business Analyst
5 36 (5.40%) Consultant
6 35 (5.25%) Architect
7 34 (5.10%) IT Support
8 33 (4.95%) Lead
9 29 (4.35%) Administrator
10 26 (3.90%) Java Developer
10 26 (3.90%) Project Manager
11 23 (3.45%) Support Analyst
12 20 (3.00%) Software Engineer
13 19 (2.85%) Support Engineer
14 18 (2.70%) Platform Engineer
15 16 (2.40%) Automation Engineer
15 16 (2.40%) IT Engineer
15 16 (2.40%) Technical Analyst
16 15 (2.25%) IT Support Engineer
16 15 (2.25%) Service Analyst
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 40 (6.00%) REST
2 34 (5.10%) Spring Boot
3 32 (4.80%) Spring
4 26 (3.90%) Kafka
4 26 (3.90%) RESTful
5 22 (3.30%) FastAPI
6 18 (2.70%) .NET
7 17 (2.55%) React
8 16 (2.40%) SOAP
9 15 (2.25%) HTML
9 15 (2.25%) JSON
10 13 (1.95%) Node.js
11 12 (1.80%) CSS
11 12 (1.80%) XML
12 10 (1.50%) AngularJS
12 10 (1.50%) JMS
12 10 (1.50%) JWT
12 10 (1.50%) OpenTelemetry
13 8 (1.20%) Celery
13 8 (1.20%) GraphQL
Miscellaneous
1 50 (7.50%) Product Ownership
2 25 (3.75%) Cloud Native
3 21 (3.15%) Onboarding
4 20 (3.00%) Data Protection Act
5 17 (2.55%) Management Information System
6 16 (2.40%) Data Structures
7 15 (2.25%) Self-Motivation
8 14 (2.10%) Analytical Mindset
9 13 (1.95%) Enterprise Software
10 12 (1.80%) Data Centre
10 12 (1.80%) SWIFT Messaging Network
11 10 (1.50%) Algorithms
12 9 (1.35%) Legacy Systems
12 9 (1.35%) Mainframe
12 9 (1.35%) Virtual Team
13 8 (1.20%) N-Tier
14 6 (0.90%) CMDB
14 6 (0.90%) Greenfield Project
14 6 (0.90%) NHS
15 5 (0.75%) Public Cloud
Operating Systems
1 73 (10.94%) Windows
2 66 (9.90%) Linux
3 19 (2.85%) Unix
3 19 (2.85%) Windows 10
4 17 (2.55%) Windows Server
5 14 (2.10%) Android
6 12 (1.80%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
7 11 (1.65%) Apple iOS
8 6 (0.90%) Mac OS X
9 3 (0.45%) VMS
10 1 (0.15%) Mac OS
10 1 (0.15%) zOS
Processes & Methodologies
1 209 (31.33%) Agile
2 123 (18.44%) CI/CD
3 101 (15.14%) Stakeholder Management
4 97 (14.54%) Continuous Improvement
5 88 (13.19%) DevOps
6 74 (11.09%) Decision-Making
7 70 (10.49%) Project Management
8 68 (10.19%) Test Automation
9 62 (9.30%) Analytics
9 62 (9.30%) Containerisation
10 61 (9.15%) Migration
11 56 (8.40%) Business Intelligence
11 56 (8.40%) Mentoring
12 54 (8.10%) Scrum
13 53 (7.95%) Change Management
13 53 (7.95%) Microservices
14 52 (7.80%) Stakeholder Engagement
15 49 (7.35%) ITSM
16 48 (7.20%) AI
16 48 (7.20%) SDLC
Programming Languages
1 107 (16.04%) Python
2 75 (11.24%) Java
3 74 (11.09%) SQL
4 35 (5.25%) PowerShell
5 29 (4.35%) JavaScript
6 28 (4.20%) Bash
7 23 (3.45%) Shell Script
8 20 (3.00%) TypeScript
9 19 (2.85%) C#
10 13 (1.95%) Perl
11 10 (1.50%) VBA
12 8 (1.20%) T-SQL
13 7 (1.05%) COBOL
13 7 (1.05%) Data Analysis Expressions
13 7 (1.05%) Go
13 7 (1.05%) Groovy
13 7 (1.05%) JCL
14 6 (0.90%) CLIST
14 6 (0.90%) REXX
15 3 (0.45%) ABAP
Qualifications
1 87 (13.04%) Security Cleared
2 82 (12.29%) Degree
3 62 (9.30%) SC Cleared
4 35 (5.25%) Computer Science Degree
5 28 (4.20%) BPSS Clearance
6 15 (2.25%) CISSP
7 13 (1.95%) PMP
8 12 (1.80%) Cisco Certification
8 12 (1.80%) Six Sigma Green Belt
9 9 (1.35%) AWS Certification
9 9 (1.35%) CCDP
9 9 (1.35%) CCNP
9 9 (1.35%) CISM
10 8 (1.20%) CCNA
10 8 (1.20%) DBS Check
11 7 (1.05%) ISTQB
11 7 (1.05%) PMI Certification
12 5 (0.75%) Azure Certification
13 4 (0.60%) CBAP
13 4 (0.60%) ITIL Foundation Certificate
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 42 (6.30%) QA
2 31 (4.65%) GDPR
3 25 (3.75%) Data Quality
4 19 (2.85%) Accessibility
5 14 (2.10%) Sarbanes-Oxley
6 13 (1.95%) PCI DSS
7 12 (1.80%) ISO/IEC 27001
8 11 (1.65%) NIST
8 11 (1.65%) SLA
9 10 (1.50%) ISO 20022
9 10 (1.50%) PSD2
9 10 (1.50%) SEPA
10 9 (1.35%) PMO
11 3 (0.45%) HL7
11 3 (0.45%) WCAG
12 2 (0.30%) California Consumer Privacy Act
12 2 (0.30%) COBIT
13 1 (0.15%) Actionable Recommendations
13 1 (0.15%) GRC
13 1 (0.15%) SOC 2
System Software
1 66 (9.90%) Docker
2 36 (5.40%) Active Directory
3 10 (1.50%) Oracle RAC
4 8 (1.20%) VMware Infrastructure
5 7 (1.05%) RACF
5 7 (1.05%) Time Sharing Option
5 7 (1.05%) VMware NSX
6 6 (0.90%) ACF2
7 4 (0.60%) vSphere
8 2 (0.30%) Firmware
8 2 (0.30%) Virtual Machines
9 1 (0.15%) BitLocker
9 1 (0.15%) ISA Server
9 1 (0.15%) Job Entry Subsystem
9 1 (0.15%) VMware Workstation
Systems Management
1 66 (9.90%) Kubernetes
2 34 (5.10%) Terraform
3 27 (4.05%) Ansible
4 22 (3.30%) Grafana
5 19 (2.85%) SCCM
6 18 (2.70%) Prometheus
7 15 (2.25%) Microsoft Intune
8 10 (1.50%) Control-M
8 10 (1.50%) Data Guard
8 10 (1.50%) yum
9 9 (1.35%) IBM Guardium
9 9 (1.35%) Nessus
10 6 (0.90%) CA Endevor
10 6 (0.90%) Tivoli
10 6 (0.90%) Tivoli Storage Manager
11 5 (0.75%) Active Directory Federation Services
11 5 (0.75%) Norton AntiVirus
12 4 (0.60%) EMC NetWorker
12 4 (0.60%) Single Sign-On
13 3 (0.45%) Istio
Vendors
1 177 (26.54%) Microsoft
2 64 (9.60%) SAP
3 44 (6.60%) Oracle
3 44 (6.60%) ServiceNow
4 36 (5.40%) Google
5 23 (3.45%) VMware
6 16 (2.40%) Splunk
7 14 (2.10%) Red Hat
8 12 (1.80%) Cisco
9 10 (1.50%) Citrix
9 10 (1.50%) Databricks
9 10 (1.50%) IBM
10 9 (1.35%) Tenable
11 7 (1.05%) BeyondTrust
11 7 (1.05%) CyberArk
11 7 (1.05%) Thycotic
12 6 (0.90%) Brio
12 6 (0.90%) Computacenter
12 6 (0.90%) F5
12 6 (0.90%) Workday