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 11 July 2026, with comparisons to the same periods in the previous two years.

6 months to
11 Jul 2026
Same period 2025 Same period 2024
Rank 14 4 6
Rank change year-on-year -10 +2 +10
Contract jobs citing Problem-Solving 749 704 618
As % of all contract jobs in the North of England 10.37% 18.53% 13.06%
As % of the Processes & Methodologies category 12.28% 20.88% 15.52%
Number of daily rates quoted 430 403 353
10th Percentile £297 £257 £287
25th Percentile £363 £372 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £447 £475 £485
Median % change year-on-year -5.84% -2.06% -7.62%
75th Percentile £538 £558 £550
90th Percentile £617 £652 £638
England median daily rate £495 £500 £500
% change year-on-year -1.00% - -4.76%
Number of hourly rates quoted 61 69 61
10th Percentile £17.00 £12.65 -
25th Percentile £17.25 £17.79 £10.95
Median hourly rate £32.23 £22.14 £11.50
Median % change year-on-year +45.55% +92.52% -58.18%
75th Percentile £74.26 £34.11 £26.39
90th Percentile £89.75 £63.40 £62.50
England median hourly rate £22.00 £21.27 £16.23
% change year-on-year +3.46% +31.02% -69.09%

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 6,100 3,372 3,982
As % of all contract IT jobs advertised in the North of England 84.42% 88.76% 84.13%
Number of daily rates quoted 3,667 2,178 2,394
10th Percentile £313 £268 £295
25th Percentile £402 £375 £400
Median daily rate (50th Percentile) £490 £466 £495
Median % change year-on-year +5.21% -5.91% -2.46%
75th Percentile £588 £555 £580
90th Percentile £675 £650 £664
England median daily rate £525 £514 £525
% change year-on-year +2.14% -2.10% -4.55%
Number of hourly rates quoted 437 191 365
10th Percentile £16.62 £12.82 £11.20
25th Percentile £22.63 £17.46 £12.55
Median hourly rate £45.00 £25.00 £22.00
Median % change year-on-year +80.00% +13.64% -4.97%
75th Percentile £71.91 £47.12 £46.18
90th Percentile £81.90 £75.00 £66.61
England median hourly rate £47.00 £25.15 £38.12
% change year-on-year +86.88% -34.02% -6.09%

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 11 July 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 11 July 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 11 July 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 -11 370 £447 -7.74% 356
Yorkshire -7 334 £450 -5.26% 221
North East -17 51 £366 -18.61% 107
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 40 (5.34%) Confluence
2 22 (2.94%) Apache Spark
3 17 (2.27%) SharePoint
4 10 (1.34%) Apache Airflow
5 9 (1.20%) Apache
6 8 (1.07%) Microsoft Exchange
7 6 (0.80%) Jupyter
8 4 (0.53%) CMS
9 3 (0.40%) CICS
10 2 (0.27%) Adobe Experience Manager
10 2 (0.27%) Camunda
10 2 (0.27%) Oracle Workflow
10 2 (0.27%) WebLogic
11 1 (0.13%) Apache Superset
11 1 (0.13%) Mule
11 1 (0.13%) Mule ESB
11 1 (0.13%) nginx
11 1 (0.13%) Tomcat
11 1 (0.13%) WebSphere
11 1 (0.13%) WordPress
Applications
1 36 (4.81%) Microsoft Excel
2 26 (3.47%) Microsoft Office
3 14 (1.87%) Microsoft PowerPoint
4 11 (1.47%) MS Visio
5 6 (0.80%) Microsoft Project
6 5 (0.67%) Chatbot
7 3 (0.40%) CATIA
7 3 (0.40%) Spreadsheet
8 1 (0.13%) Acrobat
8 1 (0.13%) EngageOne
Business Applications
1 37 (4.94%) SAP S/4HANA
2 8 (1.07%) Remedy ITSM
3 4 (0.53%) Dynamics CRM
4 3 (0.40%) Oracle EBS
4 3 (0.40%) Payment Gateway
5 2 (0.27%) NetSuite
5 2 (0.27%) SAP ERP
5 2 (0.27%) SAP HCM
5 2 (0.27%) SAP Payroll
6 1 (0.13%) Actimize
6 1 (0.13%) Elite 3E
6 1 (0.13%) FIS Private Capital Suite
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Applications
6 1 (0.13%) Oracle Procure-to-Pay
6 1 (0.13%) ResourceLink
6 1 (0.13%) SystmOne
6 1 (0.13%) VisionPLUS
Cloud Services
1 126 (16.82%) Azure
2 90 (12.02%) AWS
3 56 (7.48%) Microsoft 365
4 55 (7.34%) Power Platform
5 43 (5.74%) GCP
6 40 (5.34%) GitHub
7 39 (5.21%) OpenShift
8 23 (3.07%) Entra ID
9 17 (2.27%) Azure DevOps
10 12 (1.60%) Microsoft Copilot
10 12 (1.60%) Serverless
11 11 (1.47%) Google Kubernetes Engine
11 11 (1.47%) SaaS
12 10 (1.34%) Power Automate
13 9 (1.20%) GitHub Actions
13 9 (1.20%) PowerApps
14 8 (1.07%) Azure Monitor
14 8 (1.07%) Copilot Studio
15 7 (0.93%) Azure Storage
15 7 (0.93%) Google Workspace
Communications & Networking
1 31 (4.14%) DNS
2 28 (3.74%) Firewall
3 23 (3.07%) VPN
4 18 (2.40%) WAN
5 17 (2.27%) Network Security
6 15 (2.00%) LAN
7 13 (1.74%) TCP/IP
8 12 (1.60%) VLAN
9 11 (1.47%) SAN
9 11 (1.47%) Wi-Fi
9 11 (1.47%) Wireless
10 9 (1.20%) DHCP
11 7 (0.93%) Kerberos
11 7 (0.93%) VoIP
12 6 (0.80%) Cisco Nexus
13 5 (0.67%) BGP
13 5 (0.67%) SD-WAN
13 5 (0.67%) WLAN
14 4 (0.53%) OSPF
14 4 (0.53%) SSL
Database & Business Intelligence
1 43 (5.74%) Power BI
2 34 (4.54%) SQL Server
3 33 (4.41%) MongoDB
4 23 (3.07%) PostgreSQL
5 22 (2.94%) Data Warehouse
6 16 (2.14%) Relational Database
7 14 (1.87%) Tableau
8 13 (1.74%) NoSQL
9 12 (1.60%) Big Data
10 11 (1.47%) Hadoop
11 10 (1.34%) MySQL
12 9 (1.20%) Metadata
13 8 (1.07%) Db2
13 8 (1.07%) SQL Server Integration Services
14 6 (0.80%) DataStage
15 5 (0.67%) Snowflake Schema
16 4 (0.53%) Data Vault
16 4 (0.53%) Neo4j
16 4 (0.53%) Oracle Database
16 4 (0.53%) Power Query
Development Applications
1 104 (13.89%) JIRA
2 42 (5.61%) Jenkins
3 34 (4.54%) Git
4 26 (3.47%) GitLab
5 15 (2.00%) Sonatype Nexus
6 12 (1.60%) Mockito
7 10 (1.34%) Selenium
8 9 (1.20%) Postman
9 7 (0.93%) REST Assured
10 6 (0.80%) JUnit
11 5 (0.67%) Cucumber
11 5 (0.67%) Gatling
12 3 (0.40%) Claude Code
12 3 (0.40%) Cypress.io
12 3 (0.40%) Gradle
12 3 (0.40%) MSI
12 3 (0.40%) Serenity BDD
13 2 (0.27%) JMeter
13 2 (0.27%) Oracle Forms
13 2 (0.27%) Visual Studio
General
1 356 (47.53%) Social Skills
2 321 (42.86%) Analytical Skills
3 217 (28.97%) Finance
4 86 (11.48%) Banking
5 60 (8.01%) Public Sector
6 36 (4.81%) Documentation Skills
7 29 (3.87%) Influencing Skills
8 27 (3.60%) Legal
9 25 (3.34%) Organisational Skills
10 19 (2.54%) Manufacturing
11 16 (2.14%) Retail
12 14 (1.87%) Law
13 9 (1.20%) Telecoms
14 8 (1.07%) Financial Institution
14 8 (1.07%) Presentation Skills
15 7 (0.93%) Aerospace
15 7 (0.93%) Automotive
15 7 (0.93%) Inclusion and Diversity
16 6 (0.80%) Marketing
17 4 (0.53%) Local Government
Job Titles
1 143 (19.09%) Analyst
2 91 (12.15%) Developer
3 65 (8.68%) Lead
4 51 (6.81%) Senior
5 45 (6.01%) Architect
6 44 (5.87%) Business Analyst
7 32 (4.27%) Consultant
8 29 (3.87%) IT Support
9 28 (3.74%) Administrator
9 28 (3.74%) Java Developer
9 28 (3.74%) Project Manager
10 26 (3.47%) Data Engineer
11 24 (3.20%) Python Developer
12 23 (3.07%) DevOps Engineer
13 21 (2.80%) Data Analyst
14 20 (2.67%) IT Engineer
15 17 (2.27%) IT Analyst
15 17 (2.27%) Network Engineer
16 16 (2.14%) Support Analyst
16 16 (2.14%) Support Engineer
Libraries, Frameworks & Software Standards
1 38 (5.07%) Kafka
2 35 (4.67%) REST
3 33 (4.41%) OpenTelemetry
4 30 (4.01%) Spring
5 25 (3.34%) Spring Boot
6 21 (2.80%) FastAPI
7 18 (2.40%) React
7 18 (2.40%) RESTful
8 15 (2.00%) JSON
9 13 (1.74%) .NET
10 12 (1.60%) Playwright
11 11 (1.47%) HTML
11 11 (1.47%) SOAP
11 11 (1.47%) XML
12 10 (1.34%) CSS
12 10 (1.34%) LDAP
12 10 (1.34%) Node.js
13 9 (1.20%) JAX-RS
13 9 (1.20%) OAuth
14 8 (1.07%) ActiveMQ
Miscellaneous
1 55 (7.34%) Product Ownership
2 45 (6.01%) Cloud Native
3 33 (4.41%) Data Protection Act
4 31 (4.14%) Onboarding
5 25 (3.34%) Data Centre
6 23 (3.07%) Analytical Mindset
6 23 (3.07%) Legacy Systems
7 21 (2.80%) Self-Motivation
8 18 (2.40%) Management Information System
9 17 (2.27%) Hybrid Cloud
9 17 (2.27%) Mainframe
10 15 (2.00%) AI Agents
10 15 (2.00%) Driving Licence
11 14 (1.87%) Enterprise Software
12 13 (1.74%) Distributed Systems
13 12 (1.60%) Data Structures
14 11 (1.47%) Virtual Team
15 9 (1.20%) Mobile App
15 9 (1.20%) PKI
15 9 (1.20%) Replication
Operating Systems
1 76 (10.15%) Windows
2 44 (5.87%) Linux
3 25 (3.34%) Windows 10
4 19 (2.54%) Unix
5 16 (2.14%) Apple iOS
6 12 (1.60%) Mac OS
7 11 (1.47%) Android
8 10 (1.34%) Windows Server
9 7 (0.93%) Mac OS X
9 7 (0.93%) Red Hat Enterprise Linux
10 4 (0.53%) Windows Server 2019
11 3 (0.40%) Solaris
11 3 (0.40%) Ubuntu
11 3 (0.40%) zOS
12 2 (0.27%) AIX
12 2 (0.27%) CentOS
12 2 (0.27%) Data ONTAP
12 2 (0.27%) HPUX
12 2 (0.27%) Oracle Linux
12 2 (0.27%) SUSE
Processes & Methodologies
1 196 (26.17%) Agile
2 155 (20.69%) CI/CD
3 149 (19.89%) Continuous Improvement
4 137 (18.29%) DevOps
5 111 (14.82%) Stakeholder Management
6 103 (13.75%) Migration
7 84 (11.21%) Project Management
8 81 (10.81%) Change Management
9 77 (10.28%) Analytics
10 70 (9.35%) ITIL
10 70 (9.35%) Test Automation
11 67 (8.95%) AI
11 67 (8.95%) Containerisation
11 67 (8.95%) Stakeholder Engagement
12 65 (8.68%) Validation
13 62 (8.28%) ERP
14 61 (8.14%) Customer Service
15 58 (7.74%) Decision-Making
16 57 (7.61%) Data Protection
17 55 (7.34%) Business Intelligence
Programming Languages
1 131 (17.49%) Python
2 98 (13.08%) SQL
3 60 (8.01%) Java
4 58 (7.74%) PowerShell
5 33 (4.41%) Bash
6 22 (2.94%) JavaScript
7 12 (1.60%) TypeScript
8 10 (1.34%) PL/SQL
9 9 (1.20%) C#
9 9 (1.20%) R
10 8 (1.07%) COBOL
10 8 (1.07%) Shell Script
11 7 (0.93%) Bicep
11 7 (0.93%) JCL
12 6 (0.80%) Kotlin
12 6 (0.80%) T-SQL
13 5 (0.67%) ABAP
13 5 (0.67%) Go
13 5 (0.67%) VBA
14 4 (0.53%) REXX
Qualifications
1 88 (11.75%) Security Cleared
2 70 (9.35%) Degree
3 61 (8.14%) SC Cleared
4 39 (5.21%) BPSS Clearance
5 27 (3.60%) Computer Science Degree
6 26 (3.47%) Microsoft Certification
7 21 (2.80%) Cisco Certification
8 18 (2.40%) CISSP
9 17 (2.27%) PMP
10 16 (2.14%) A+ Certification
11 15 (2.00%) CCNA
11 15 (2.00%) Network+ Certification
12 13 (1.74%) PMI Certification
13 10 (1.34%) CCNP
14 9 (1.20%) CompTIA Security+
15 8 (1.07%) AWS Certification
15 8 (1.07%) Azure Certification
16 7 (0.93%) CEH
16 7 (0.93%) MCSE
17 6 (0.80%) HNC
Quality Assurance & Compliance
1 46 (6.14%) Data Quality
2 27 (3.60%) QA
3 17 (2.27%) Accessibility
4 15 (2.00%) GDPR
5 13 (1.74%) SLA
6 11 (1.47%) GRC
6 11 (1.47%) PMO
7 10 (1.34%) ISO/IEC 27001
7 10 (1.34%) NIST
8 7 (0.93%) PSD2
9 6 (0.80%) PCI DSS
10 5 (0.67%) Actionable Recommendations
11 4 (0.53%) ISO 20022
11 4 (0.53%) SEPA
12 3 (0.40%) ISO 8583
12 3 (0.40%) Sarbanes-Oxley
13 2 (0.27%) HIPAA
13 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 27005
13 2 (0.27%) ISO/IEC 42001
14 1 (0.13%) GxP
System Software
1 64 (8.54%) Docker
2 53 (7.08%) Active Directory
3 22 (2.94%) VMware Infrastructure
4 17 (2.27%) vSphere
5 15 (2.00%) VMware NSX
6 10 (1.34%) Virtual Machines
7 7 (0.93%) Firmware
8 4 (0.53%) ACF2
8 4 (0.53%) RACF
8 4 (0.53%) Time Sharing Option
8 4 (0.53%) Virtual Desktop
9 3 (0.40%) Hyper-V
10 2 (0.27%) EMC RecoverPoint
10 2 (0.27%) KVM
10 2 (0.27%) NFS
10 2 (0.27%) SRDF
10 2 (0.27%) VMware ESXi
11 1 (0.13%) Oracle RAC
11 1 (0.13%) Terminal Services
Systems Management
1 84 (11.21%) Kubernetes
2 59 (7.88%) Terraform
3 51 (6.81%) Ansible
4 45 (6.01%) Grafana
5 36 (4.81%) Prometheus
6 17 (2.27%) Control-M
7 15 (2.00%) Argo
7 15 (2.00%) IBM Guardium
7 15 (2.00%) Nessus
7 15 (2.00%) vCenter Server
8 13 (1.74%) Microsoft Intune
9 11 (1.47%) SCCM
10 5 (0.67%) CA Endevor
10 5 (0.67%) Kustomize
11 4 (0.53%) Single Sign-On
12 3 (0.40%) Active Directory Federation Services
12 3 (0.40%) Istio
12 3 (0.40%) McAfee ePO
12 3 (0.40%) Tivoli
12 3 (0.40%) Tivoli Storage Manager
Vendors
1 128 (17.09%) Microsoft
2 64 (8.54%) SAP
3 52 (6.94%) ServiceNow
4 47 (6.28%) Splunk
5 33 (4.41%) Oracle
6 26 (3.47%) VMware
7 24 (3.20%) Google
8 22 (2.94%) Cisco
9 20 (2.67%) Red Hat
9 20 (2.67%) Workday
10 15 (2.00%) Pure Storage
10 15 (2.00%) Tenable
11 12 (1.60%) Concur
11 12 (1.60%) Sage
12 11 (1.47%) Dell
13 10 (1.34%) F5
13 10 (1.34%) IBM
13 10 (1.34%) Palo Alto
14 8 (1.07%) Remedy
14 8 (1.07%) Salesforce